


The Dragons' Song

by zavocado



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Almost everyone is a shapeshifter, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, But underage by modern standards, By Westerosi custom they're both 16 and adults, Coming of Age, Consensual Underage Sex, Direwolf shapeshifters, Dragon Shapeshifters, Dragon dreams, Eventual Smut, F/M, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Jonerys, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, R Plus L Equals J, Romance, Some Angst too at parts, Targaryen Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2019-09-07 13:54:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 93,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zavocado/pseuds/zavocado
Summary: For a thousand years, the Starks have nurtured the wild magic in their blood. First as wargs, and now as shapeshifters taking on direwolf forms as winter blankets their lands, their pack has endured. Yet Jon dreams of flying, despite his wolf pelt wrapped tight around his shoulders. Dragons soar in his dreams, singing their fire, calling to him.In the south, Dany is the youngest dragon in her family's dying legacy. Swift and strong, growing larger by the day, but dragons are wild. Fire made flesh with wrathful, solitary natures contradicting their human existence. Every dragon must reconcile their halves, and so must Dany, before she loses herself to the fire for good.





	1. Dragon's Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, I'm back! NaNoWriMo was a success :D
> 
> And this fic is the proof. I wrote this all November, and I'm finally getting around to posting it. It's at 50k (and some change) right now (and in need of editing and proofreading) and I'm expecting to end up at around 80k by the end. I'll update this one weekly, I think, to give me a chance to edit/proofread my November madness, and also to get back to work on Embers! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about that one. If you're following Embers, expect an update between December 10-15.
> 
> Also, if there's any additional tags you think need to be added, just let me know. I never seem to get all the tags right on here :/
> 
> So these first three chapters will follow Jon's pre-meeting Dany story. Then we'll be hopping to three chapters of Dany's pre-meeting Jon story. Crazy, I know.
> 
> Enjoy!

Winter brought forth the wolves.

Jon and his cousins practiced all year for when the first frost covered the land, marking autumn’s arrival. His family was like most in the far reaches of the north: shapeshifters. For the Starks that meant willing their soft human flesh to the hard, fierce muscle of their direwolf forms. All winter, they were meant to endure that way. To hunt and thrive as a shaggy-coated pack in the chilled winter air under a plump, bright moon.

For a thousand years, the Starks had nurtured the wild magic in their blood. Their ancestor, Brandon Stark, who built their home Winterfell, had been the first. He’d built the fortress deep in the northern forest, in the heart of the moors between the steep western mountains and the pockmarked lakes to the east. Bran the Builder, he was called in the old tales. Before him, the First Men had relied on familiars. They’d been people of the woods, clustered in small villages around their timeless pale weirwoods. Living on the ancient magic of warging— melding their minds to a companion animal. Bran the Builder had taken a direwolf as his own. Every Stark had in those days, just as the Mormonts took bears and the Greyjoys of the craggy, hard islands harnessed monstrous kraken.

Until Brandon.

Brandon’s direwolf had been a second skin turned permanent. As the tale went, he warged for too long; left his human body behind one day, cold and lifeless in Winterfell’s godswood. He ate his human flesh raw that winter, a frigid season so long the sun had vanished from the world. As a direwolf, he striped the skin, sinew, and muscle from his own human bones. Then he ate the bones, too.  He gorged on himself until spring had arrived. His blood fed Winterfell’s heart tree, a vast white weirwood with scarlet leaves and a terrible face carved into its trunk. In exchange, the great tree granted him a new life, a more powerful existence. Man and direwolf, bound as one, transformed back into a human, his warm gray pelt a fur cloak around his shoulders. Ever since, the Starks could shift. Each new member of their pack took on a unique direwolf form, a second soul alight inside them.

As a boy, Jon had been filled with awe every time Nana Lyarra told the tale. Some days, she made it extra bloody for his cousin Robb. Other times, she added a silly love story for Sansa’s dreamy heart. But Jon liked the gruesome tale best, that left the truth, hard and cold, at his feet. It stirred a longing inside him to crunch thick, charred bones in his jaws—

To _fly_.

The rest of his family—his pack—couldn’t fly though. Direwolves were meant for the land, not the skies, Uncle Ned told him. To hunt and run, to be swift shadows in the woods, and howl clear and long to the weirwood trees glowing white under a full, ripe moon. Nobody else talked of soaring as high as ravens and crows, but every time Jon and his cousins practiced shifting into fuzzy direwolf pups, a greater hunger settled needy in Jon’s belly.

“I want to fly, too, Mama,” he always said afterward, as she scooped him up and cradled him in her arms in their firelit chambers. “I’m gonna fly so high I can kiss the moon!”

“Of course you will, my sweet. You’re my special little wolf. Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from dreaming.”

His dreams never worried Mama. Every time Jon mentioned flying, however, or was caught running about the weirwood grove with his arms spread wide, the others grew uneasy. A wolf kept four paws on the ground. Only their howls touched the sky.

Jon’s grandparents were their pack’s mated alphas: Grandpop Rickard and Nana Lyarra. Of their four children, only three remained. Uncle Brandon had run too wild, everyone said, and met an ill-fated end. But Uncle Ned was still around, with his mate Auntie Cat, and their growing family. Their oldest was Robb, born two months before Jon. They were the very best of friends, and each other’s constant companion. Every few years, Jon’s aunt and uncle added another child to their little pack. Sweet Sansa, then wild Arya, and a baby brother they named for the first Brandon Stark. By the time baby Rickon was born, Grandpop Rickard had died of a fever and Nana Lyarra was their pack’s sole leader.

Jon’s youngest uncle, Benjen, was around, too, the former runt of his grandparents’ children. Since manhood, his gaunt, grim uncle had wandered further north, alone, half the year. He’d never taken a mate, so far as Jon recalled. Exploration was his life’s work, mapping the northern lands. Nana Lyarra’s only daughter was Jon’s mother, Lyanna. She’d never had a life-long mate, not like a proper wolf should. Nana Lyarra often scolded her for it, but she doted on Jon just the same as his cousins. Despite his oddities and dreams, Nana Lyarra adored him.

Because Jon was odd. He’d known it ever since his first true winter.

He and Robb had been taught together as soon as they could comprehend words. Shifting was meant to be easy once you were big enough to understand what to do. For Robb, it was. He thrilled in his wolf form, even as a pup no bigger than a fox. Once he could shift at will, it was near impossible to get him to change back. For Jon, it wasn’t the same.

They’d been three when their official instruction began with Uncle Ned and Mama. Before that, both Jon and Robb would shift into stumbly little pups unintentionally, without a clue of how to shift back. As long as Robb had been cuddled until he shifted again, he was content, but for Jon it sent his wobbly pup body into a panic. Like he was caught in a snare, tethered to the ground until his veins ran dry. Unlike the others, Jon couldn’t stand to be one form for too long.

His first true winter was the year of his sixth nameday. Both he and Robb were expected to shift for the season with the pack, to hunt and live as their direwolf selves. Only little Sansa, baby Arya, and Auntie Cat would remain human. Uncle Ned, too, would switch back as needed for his young daughters. After the first full day, however, Jon couldn’t maintain it, try as he might. He cried and sobbed, howling his voice hoarse after the first night. As a direwolf, he never howled again after that. His voice abandoned him, left him a silent stalking ghost amongst the snowy forest. That was how he received his direwolf name, not for a great deed or a personal strength. Ghost, they called him, for the voice he’d lost, stripped away by uncontrollable ripples of fear.

For Robb, becoming Grey Wind was freedom.

For Jon, remaining Ghost felt like a wisp of smoke spreading too thin in the air. A single drop of rain in a thunderous downpour, washing out to sea with the flood waters.

Other friendly packs called him Snow as he grew and wandered with his cousins and uncles and mother. But they always kept their distance. From his solid white fur and his blood red eyes that marked him as an odd albino. As other. Growing to manhood only proved to worsen the discomfort. His scent changed, just as Robb’s and other young males did, but, again, Jon’s was too different. Too smoky, too hot in the nostrils like ash in your throat. Wrong for a wolf, the other packs whispered.

Jon did his best to hide it, to rein his scent back into his pores. He threaded lighter than the rest, left only the barest paw impressions in the snow and mud, trying to mask his scent trails from everyone else. Yet, it did no good. His scent lingered, fanned out across the forest like wafting smoke from a growing fire.

Without trying, Jon’s presence made others uncomfortable. His silent howl and smoky scent and bright red eyes unnerved them. He kept to himself as best he could. Spent his direwolf time with his little cousin Arya and his always accepting mother, stayed within the castle walls more and more. Meanwhile Robb grew lean and muscular and began scenting the air, edging toward their sixteenth year when they would be allowed to find a mate for the first time.

Robb had the itch for it, but Jon felt nothing. At the beginning of autumn for their fifteenth year, before the pack shifted for the season, Jon and Robb were sat down with their elders to discuss the spring. How their lives would change as they officially became mating men of the pack.

“We’ll go south once spring arrives,” Robb said, confident and excited. “All the other men do the same when it’s mating season.”

But Jon stayed quiet as the logistics were talked over. Every time he thought of the south, his throat burned like he’d swallowed a flaming branch. Up and down his neck and deep into his chest. Beside him, Lyanna focused on his brooding quiet.

“What do you think, Jon?”

Uncle Ned had noticed his silence, too.

Jon looked up, found his uncle, mother, and grandmother all watching him anxiously. Robb was still beaming and eager. He didn’t suspect a thing, even then.

“I want to go north with Uncle Benjen.”

“What?”

Robb had never looked more hurt. Not even that time when Jon had wrestled him to the ground, with his teeth piercing Robb’s hind leg when they were twelve.

“South is…”

But Jon couldn’t explain it. How could he put to words the fear and fire the southern horizon brought to him?

“There’s others that go north, too. And for some what’s north to us is south for them. Like the Karstarks.” Jon avoided his cousin’s disappointed blue eyes. “I’m going north for the season. Like the Starks of old used to do.”

Both of their plans were met with approval, but for the rest of the night Lyanna and Uncle Ned watched him. Robb avoided him. He felt their eyes on him while the pack ate in the hall. Then later around the fire pit in Winterfell’s yard as Nana Lyarra wowed little Rickon with her tales. Jon sat away from the flames, tried not to let himself get lost in their flickering, tempting delight. He wrapped his pale, shaggy pelt around himself for warmth.

But his mother had never been the type to avoid things. She joined him when Auntie Cat and Uncle Ned began ushering their youngest inside for bed.

“Benjen will do well to guide you,” she said. “The true north is a vast place, and wild, too. More so than anything in our woods. A dangerous adventure for a young wolf. I can’t wait to hear all about it when you return.”

Jon grunted in agreement, then shied away when his mother reached over and tucked one of his curls behind his ear. Unlike his wolf pelt, his hair was a tumble of springy curls, black as pitch. His eyes, too, were darker than the rest of the Starks. Gray like his mother and uncles and grandmother, but still different. His direwolf skin was as opposite as possible from his human one.

“Jon, if there’s anything you want to ask me, you can.” Lyanna didn’t reach for him again, but she stayed by his side. “I hate seeing you grow so distant.”

“Who’s my father?”

Despite the obvious absence, Jon had never asked about him. Uncle Ned had been all a father could be to Jon just the same as his children. Jon had never thought to miss his own, whoever he’d been. But sometimes, his dreams made him wonder. Some nights, in the hushed chill of Winterfell’s halls, Jon dreamt himself outside the castle gates. Overhead, a great winged beast soared. A dragon, Jon was certain. Scaled and horned, his wings as wide as the castle grounds. He was an impressive creature, glittering jade green with bright bronze spines as he swooped across the sky. Every time he dreamt it, Jon found himself leaving the castle in pursuit, stumbling on clumsy human legs, chasing the dragon’s song.

 _Father’s song_ , Jon thought. A cadence of sweet melodies and lingering crescendos that echoed across the fields, calling to Jon; _reaching_ for him.

It made no sense. Everyone knew the dragons were gone. Even in the south and east, the dragons had perished long ago. Their numbers had never been large, their progeny too rare. But every dream lessened the heat tight in Jon’s chest. Until dawn came, and his normal life returned. Then his insides smoldered anew, like flames were chasing each other around his heart.

“All these years, I wondered when you would ask.” Lyanna took a shaky breath, steeling herself. “He was a good man, Jon. Lost to the south before you were born. We only knew each other a short while. Your father… he didn’t even know we’d made you, Jon. I only realized it months after.”

And that didn’t make sense, not by Jon’s upbringing. He’d grown up in a small pack, it was true. Only his Uncle Ned and Auntie Cat were a mated pair, but Jon had seen the process enough to understand the oddness of his own mother’s words. Every time a new cousin bloomed to life in Auntie Cat’s belly, the pack smelled her scent changed within days. Sometimes, her scent sharpened before her heat had even ended. For his mother to not realize he was growing inside her for months didn’t fit.

“And he was… like us? He was normal, right? Or was he fully human, a mortal?”

“He could shift, yes.”

For the first time in Jon’s memory, his mother didn’t meet his eyes. Fear squeezed his ribs. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know anymore.

Across the yard, Nana Lyarra put out the last embers of the dying fire pit. She called for them, and they obeyed on instinct. Nana Lyarra was their alpha, their leader. To refuse her was considered a challenge; to disrupt the natural order of the pack.

His mother raised up on her toes to kiss his cheek. For almost three years, Jon had been taller than her. Yet it was still weird to look down at the mother he’d looked up to his entire life.

“You get some rest, Jon. Knowing Benjen, he’ll arrive when we least expect him.”

“Aye, he’s an odd one.”

“Hush, Benjen is just a lone wolf. One of these years, I expect he’ll go off and never…”

Lyanna shook her head, eyes sad. Jon squeezed her hand.

“I won’t ever do that, Mama. I’ll always come back, I promise.”

Her watery smile made him feel like he was lying, but he returned her tight embrace. Inside, his chest throbbed like a hot, raw wound.

“Goodnight, sweet wolf. Always know that I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mama.”

 

* * *

 

Uncle Benjen arrived on the tottering front edge of a storm. As the winds shrilled and the first snows swirled around the castle, Jon told his gaunt uncle he’d been allowed to join him. If Benjen would let him.

“Go north?” Uncle Benjen seemed perplexed by the idea of a companion. He frowned at his nephew. “You don’t want to go south with Robb?”

“No. I’d like to see the north. The _real_ north, Uncle. Like our ancestors used to do. Maybe… maybe next year, I’ll go south…”

He wasn’t ready. Not like Robb was, nor the other young males in their neighboring packs. A few young women had caught Jon’s eye, of course, but it didn’t stir a hunger in him. Not like the others. Uncle Benjen understood that. Jon was certain of it.

His uncle clapped him on the shoulder, his gray eyes understanding. “It’s okay to not be ready yet, Jon. Just don’t separate yourself completely. Packs survive, remember? You need the pack as much as it needs you.”

“So I can go with you?”

Uncle Benjen considered him. “I suppose you’re old enough, but I can’t promise it’ll be fun. I don’t wait until spring, Jon. Winters are hard north of here.”

But Jon didn’t care. He could finally go out into the world, get away from the ideas of the south and the heat of castle fires. One winter beyond the Wall and he would return a true Stark, an adult of their pack. Perhaps his dragon dreams would vanish, too.

 

* * *

 

Life beyond Winterfell’s northern boundary was everything Uncle Benjen had described. Harsh, frigid, a never ending ragged sheet of sleet and snow as far as human or wolf eyes could see. They left a fortnight after Uncle Benjen had arrived, as a robust autumn bloomed around Winterfell. Jon had been excited then, to kiss his mother goodbye, hug his cousins and uncle and aunt and grandmother. He was off to see a new landscape. A new world awaited, where ice dominated and sweat and fire and achy sunburns were less than memories.

Jon loathed it.

Six days north of his home, the world had shrunk to a little pocket of life in the midst of a raging blizzard. No campfire would keep. Every tree dumped as much snow as the sky, their creaking branches bowing toward the earth under the weight of their burdens. He and Uncle Benjen remained in their wolf forms, huddled in the cold, traversing through the heaps of snow. Jon’s entire body itched as the days passed and their journey continued. He’d never been in wolf form for so long. Every winter at home, he’d failed to remain a direwolf for but a few days. He’d always snuck off, for an hour or two at a time, to slip back into his human skin. But this far north, with no shelter to be had and an endless blizzard thundering around them, he had no choice. To become human would be death. Cold, sleepy death.

Almost three weeks passed before the weather cleared up. By then, Jon was leaner than he’d ever been. His muscles stiff, but strong; ears alert at the slightest sigh of wind or breath. He and Uncle Benjen reached the Wall that afternoon. Sunlight warmed them for the first time in weeks. Across the northern horizon, the fabled Wall stretched on in an endless, shimmering mass.

“It’s a sight, the first time,” Uncle Benjen said as he shifted back to his lanky human form. He tugged his soot gray pelt tight around his neck and shoulders.

Beside him, Jon had already shifted. He’d switched as soon as he’d scented warmth in the air. As Uncle Benjen led the way, Jon gazed up at the Wall. Bran the Builder was said to have built it, but for what reason nobody was certain. The Wall’s secrets were well-kept and well-lost. But it was a beautiful sight, majestic in its enormity. A great slab of ice, glittering orange and yellow and dull blue as it reflected the sky overhead. Even from a great distance, Jon could hear the trickles of water dripping down its slopes. Weeping, his uncle had called it. Wherever the sun found the Wall, the ice wept, then froze anew under the velvet night.

They were not the only travelers on the road. The Wall was a great gathering spot for other packs and shapeshifters and misfits at the northern end of the world. Uncle Benjen seemed to know everyone. Their century-distant relatives the Karstarks milled about, a pack of lesser wolves, but familiar, too. Mormonts were everywhere. Jeor, Maege, Dacey, Alysane, even a little round, black bear cub that shared Jon’s mother’s name. She came right up to Jon, shifted easily into a dark-eyed girl of seven.

“Why’re you _burning_?”

Jon tensed at her words. Her family watched the exchange; watched _him_. Like most, the Mormonts could smell his oddness, that tang of molten ash mixed with weirwood sap.

“I’m not,” Jon said, casting an uneasy glance at his uncle. “I’m just a little hot-blooded, that’s all.”

Little Lyanna considered him, sniffed the air, then darted forward to hug him.

“I like it! You’re like a big fire that don’t go out when it’s too cold.”

As quick as lightning, she tumbled back into her bear cub form, dropped to four paws, and took off into the snow piles. Nobody had ever greeted his strangeness in such a way. With something almost like fondness.

The rest of the Mormonts welcomed him, too. Like the Greyjoys farther south, the Mormont family were islanders. For the warmer seasons, they stayed out on their ancestral home of Bear Island, fished and hunted and grew fat before the winter. But when the lakes and streams froze, and an icy crust skimmed the short stretch of sea between Bear Island and the mainland, the Mormonts headed east for the castles on the Wall.

Castle Black was their favorite second home. Jon could understand why, just from what Uncle Benjen had explained of the Wall’s ancient fortresses. Nineteen castles had been built along the Wall’s southern face. Most were husks now, derelict and crumbling with no family or pack using them. Once, the Starks had made the journey. Every autumn for generations, the young Starks retreated to the Nightfort as a rite of passage. They came to climb the Wall, to stand high upon it and gaze out into the vast wilderness on either side. To go hunting in the barren lands beyond when true winter hit. Surviving until spring had marked a young wolf’s full acceptance into the pack.

The old ritual had passed out of interest, but Uncle Benjen had still done it. He had continued it every year since, made a solitary life built around the idea.

Only a few castles remained now. Castle Black was the greatest. A sturdy shelter of stone and timber, but it was strange, too. Black like its name, a thick, ashy grime burned into the foundations. Brimstone was harsh in the air. Memories of old, molten flame danced in Jon’s nostrils, had turned the castle into what it was. The scent made Jon uncomfortable, even though it was faint. If anybody else could smell it, though, they were good at pretending otherwise.

_Dragonflame did this._

Somehow, he knew. Knowing made him uneasy.

“No better place to hibernate than Castle Black,” Jeor Mormont explained. He’d welcomed Uncle Benjen like a son returned from a long journey, seemed to take a shine to Jon after his niece’s earlier assessment. His sister and nieces all called him the Old Bear, but he wasn’t their pack’s alpha. His sister Maege was. “We’ll keep well here until spring. I suppose you’re taking him below?”

“Below?” Jon glanced from the Old Bear to his uncle, confused.

“Under the castle, through the tunnel, and out the other side.” Uncle Benjen looked him over. “Aye, he’s ready. We won’t go too far this year. Probably be back before winter’s worst.”

The Old Bear nodded. “Well, good. You’re welcome back any time, as always.”

Uncle Benjen thanked him, then led Jon across the castle’s yard to a different tower. Castle Black didn’t hold as many as Winterfell, but it still had a few. The Mormonts stayed in the two biggest, but Uncle Benjen preferred Hardin’s Tower. Unlike the other towers, Hardin’s Tower showed its age. The battlement was broken, its stone a tumbling slope into the yard. The whole tower leaned, like something massive had crashed into the broken battlement, trying to knock it over. As Jon passed through its doorway, he caught that scent again. Like fire gone to rust with age. He felt like tree-sized claws were scratching across his spine and along the tower’s walls. He could even hear it—the faintest, sharp scrape of iron nails gouging stone.

“Dragons were here.”

The words left him before Jon understood what he was saying. But immediately, he knew they were true. A dragon _had_ been here. Long ago, a decade or more. He pulled his worn leather glove off, placed his bare hand on the stone wall just inside the doorway. It should be cold, like shoving his hand into an icy, winter lake. Against his palm, however, the stone was burning.

Uncle Benjen froze in front of him. He turned slowly, shut the tower’s sole door, and took his nephew by the arm.

“Don’t mention dragons here.”

“But—”

“Don’t. Not here, Jon.” His uncle looked at him, and whatever Benjen saw made him angry and frightened. “Not at all.”

He left Jon alone at the ground floor of the tower. In the morning, they ate with the Mormonts and then made the long, dark walk under the Wall. Uncle Benjen said nothing about the night before. It was as if the moment had never happened. But his words haunted Jon, like a shadow peering over his shoulder.

 _I’m different and terrible_ , Jon decided as they shifted into direwolves and rushed forth into the forest. _And Uncle Benjen knows why_.

 

* * *

 

Life beyond the Wall was unlike anything Jon had ever encountered. Food was scarce. Light faded quick at sundown. The woods seemed to move of their own accord. Trees marked with their scents vanished in the deep night, then reappeared elsewhere days later. Uncle Benjen warned him at their first dusk not to trust the forest.

“The wildlings call this the Haunted Forest,” his uncle explained as they curled up in a weirwood grove several miles north of the Wall. Unlike Winterfell’s singular tree, this grove had a dozen weirwoods, facing each other in a great circle. “They’re not the most friendly people, but they’re right about this. This forest will lead you astray, if you let it. Stay close.”

And Jon did, as best he could. He kept to the little streams, and trotted along at his uncle’s heels. They stayed only in the weirwood groves when they slept. Jon found them everywhere, or perhaps it was only the same one, rotating like the rest of the trees. Their faces were never the same. As long as he could smell the bloody sap of the heart trees, though, he had a safe haven. Together, they hunted in the night. But this hunting was harsher than the life Jon  was accustomed to.

Back in Winterfell, their pack was larger. Cornering a doe or a sturdy elk was easy with half a dozen direwolves corralling their prey. With only two, they had to be smarter. Faster and more silent than a snowflake touching down. Even then, their meals were small, the meat tough and stringy.

For a week, Jon encountered nobody else. Wildlings were afoot, he knew. Uncle Benjen had a hundred stories of his run-ins with the folks who lived entirely beyond the Wall in their mismatched packs. Some nights, Jon could scent them far off in the frosty haze of the forest. But they never came near. Not until Jon’s first full moon beyond the Wall.

He woke in the weirwood grove, curled tight in his wolf form, to the strangest smell. Ice and fire combined. Like charred ice, or perhaps fire frozen. Jon couldn’t decide before the scent spread over their clearing. Beside him, Uncle Benjen woke with a startled yelp. He sniffed the air, tucked his tail, fierce yellow eyes fearful.

But it wasn’t just the conflicting scent that met them. Winter’s cold breath came, too. Stiff, heavy fog crept through the trees, hesitated at the weirwood grove’s boundary ring, then flooded the clearing. Uncle Benjen paced, a soft growl in his throat. Jon shivered. Even as a wolf, the very air was bitterly cold, seemed to crystallize before his eyes. But the smell didn’t match. Brimstone, heat, a dark raging hunger.

Jon felt the song before he heard it. A hollow, thundering rumble that seemed to push itself through the earth and packed down snow. A dragon’s song. So very like the one in his dreams, and yet desperately horrible and horrifying, too. He shuddered, his bones rattling as the eerie melody wafted across the forest.

Uncle Benjen snapped at Jon’s shoulder, his haunches raised. He nudged Jon toward the far side of the clearing, away from where the fog had first appeared. His notion was clear, even without words.

_Flee. Run. Stay close, don’t stop until it’s quiet._

His uncle ran. Jon made to follow, but the song tugged at him again, throbbing from the earth below like a wound stitched shut, now stewing with infection beneath. He faltered at the edge of the grove. Fog brushed his paws.

No, not fog. _Breath._ Steaming ice shards of breath. Panic flooded Jon, sent him darting into the tree line, fleeing from the song. Uncle Benjen was gone, lost in the sudden deep darkness engulfing the forest. Above, the stars had gone out, except the full moon, now a terrifying bright green, the middle split from top to bottom. Jon stumbled over his own paws, frantic, chasing the fresh trail of his uncle’s paw prints.

He looked up again, willing the stars to appear to guide him. And then…

The split green moon blinked. Jon backed away as the darkness shifted in the sky, the stars flickering into sight as an enormous, black wing rose and fell. High above, a second moon blinked, just as cold and fierce and bright. Below their frigid gaze, a maw the size of a mountain opened wide.

As the dragon’s song shrilled higher, so piercing Jon was sure his ears would rupture, its wings carried it into the air. From the sky, the great dragon peered down at him, ancient and built of fury. A hush fell then. The dragon’s last wavering note shook the earth, made the trees around Jon blow sideways with the force. All around him the foggy breath swallowed his sight until only the dragon above remained.

A rushing sound left it’s mouth then, ominous and deep, like the splintering crack of molten rock exploding from the earth. Jon had only a moment to see its vibrant green fire churning in its throat. He shut his eyes against the blinding sight, said a promise to his mother he’d never get to keep.

_I’ll always come back._

Blackness came as the ground fell away under his paws.


	2. Beyond the Wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again!
> 
> Here's the second part of Jon's solo journey. Time to hang out beyond the Wall with some wildlings, but only for one chapter. We won't be seeing Ygritte again. Probably not the others either, but we'll see on that point.
> 
> Enjoy!

Jon woke in darkness, afraid of death.

He was warm, though, a comfortable toasty feeling instead of melted to his bones. Voices whispered around him. Weird echoes magnified every word.

“It was right in his face,” someone said, a woman. “I’m tellin’ ya, it came for  _ him _ .”

Another voice, gruff and deep, answered. “What’s that monster want with a wolf pup, huh? If that boy’s even mated yet, I’ll eat me own member.”

A third voice laughed, softer than the other two. “With a pretty face like that, it won’t be long until he does. Going to be breeding every woman who sees him come spring.”

“Back off, I’m the one who found him,” the first voice snapped. “I get his first.”

“You can have his first, I’ll wait. I’d rather a man who knows how to do it.”

“Shh, he’s waking.”

Jon sat up. Underneath him the ground was hard rock, smooth and strong. His shaggy white fur was draped over him. He was in a cave, underground if he had to guess. It was too warm to be on the surface. Three people were gathered nearby, sitting with their backs to the far wall, watching him as they ate.

Wildlings. Each one had a tangled mane of hair, two fiery red, the third a pale blonde. Their distrustful eyes followed him as he tried to stand, then fell back on his ass. His right hand screamed as the skin hit the ground, blistered and throbbing. The smell of his burnt, waxy flesh filled the cave followed quickly by his terror.

“It burnt ya,” the first woman said. She had fiery red hair, a crooked front tooth, and eyes like the green of new spring. Her scent was strong and heady, even across the cave. “Your paw was aflame when I dragged you under.”

Jon examined his hand, the flesh red and raw, grooved and ridged from the flame’s heat melting his skin in patches. He flexed his hand and winced. The burn was like shoving boiling splinters into his fist, but it could have been worse. That dragon could have roasted his whole body to ash. Yet, somehow he was alive.

“Thank you.” Jon squinted at the trio through the gloom. “Is my uncle here?”

“Who’s that?”

“Benjen. My uncle. The other direwolf that ran from that… from the dragon.”

The three of them glanced at each other, then the woman with the red hair spoke again.

“Didn’t see no other wolves,” she told him. 

A surge of worry raced through Jon. His uncle was missing, or had fled elsewhere. The wildlings hadn’t spotted him, at least. Uncle Benjen had never gotten along with them, not in all the years of Jon’s life. He spoke haltingly of them whenever asked, but admitted they knew the lands beyond the Wall far better than himself.

“And the dragon?” Jon listened, pricking his ears for sounds from above, but the world was silent. The dragon’s eerie song was gone. “What was that song it was singing?”

“Song?” The man snorted. “For a wolf, you’ve got shit ears. Roaring it was, same as it always does whenever it shows up. Doesn’t happen often.”

But he’d heard the dragon’s song, not roars or screeching. It’s music had transfixed him for a moment too long, had called out for the rapid pace of his heartbeat. 

“You got a name, wolf boy?”

“Jon.”

The man looked him over, suspicious. “Jon what, boy? You look like one of them Starks.”

Jon held his gaze, cast his mind around for a quick answer, then settled on a half-truth.

“My pack calls my wolf form Ghost,” he said. “Everyone else calls me Snow.”

The second woman considered him, tugging at her blonde curls. “Jon Snow, is it? You ever mated before?”

His burning cheeks seemed to be answer enough. All three wildlings laughed at him, the two women for the longest. 

The man grinned through a wild tangle of ginger beard. “You best get your member wet soon, boy. It’ll shrink and fall off if you don’t.”

Jon scowled. “I’m only fifteen. My first mating season isn’t until spring.”

“Fifteen?” Ginger beard laughed again, a deep bear-like shout. “Boy, I had my first two years before that. Your alpha got rules against you using your cock, that the way of it?”

Jon inhaled his musky scent, a wild, slumbery warmth like the Mormonts. A bear-shifter. The women weren’t bears, though. Each was different from the man and from Jon. He sniffed carefully, trying to figure it out. A fox for the fiery-haired woman, and something distinctly odd for the blonde woman. A beast Jon wasn’t familiar with, but feline in nature, and winged, too. He frowned.

“We’re a family, by blood,” Jon explained. “My grandmother’s our alpha and she… we just wait. Like a rite of passage. My uncles and Mama waited, too.”

The man made a noise of disbelief. Introductions were made after that. The ginger bear-shifter was Tormund Giantsbane. The pale, blonde woman was Val. Ygritte was the fox-shifter, his rescuer from that nightmarish dragon. He thanked her again, and didn’t miss the hopeful way she crowded him. Her scent was wintry, like a snowflake melting on his tongue.

They took him deeper into the caves, and Jon quickly realized an entire network of hot springs surrounded them. He was allowed to bathe and given a gritty paste for his burned hand. All the while, Ygritte the fox-shifter watched him. Even across the massive hot springs cave, Jon could smell her interest, the burst of lust and pheromones fluttering in the air.

Tormund took one look at the pair of them, Jon shying away and Ygritte’s moony green eyes, and laughed until he choked. After his bath, Jon was given warmer clothes, then sat down again with the little trio and questioned further. About his pack, his home, where he’d come from, why his scent was so  _ comforting _ .

“Comforting?” Nobody had ever made that remark before, not about his scent. “Most everyone else is… they don’t like my smell. It’s wrong for a wolf.”

“You’re a halfer,” Val said. Then she shifted into a great black cat, slender and dangerous, back to a pale woman, and then into a jewel-eyed, hooting owl. 

Jon gapped at her. As Val changed back into a beautiful woman a strange urge overcame Jon. To follow her example, to slid into a new, scaly skin then back to a wolf and then a boy.  _ To fly. _ His blood boiled, heat plunging into his belly. Under his leathers and his white pelt, Jon’s cock stiffened. Ygritte gave him a hopeful glance as his arousal drenched the air.

He looked away from her, his cock going limp and his face burning in embarrassment.  

“You didn’t know?” Val considered him closely. “What’s your second?”

“I...I don’t know.” But Jon had a hunch after last night in the woods, and a hundred other little instances as far back as his memory stretched. He’d rather keep not knowing.

“You don’t know?” Ygritte’s disbelief made him bristle. She glared at him, hurt bright in her eyes at his silent rejection. “How could you not know something like that?”

Jon folded his arms over his chest. “I’ve only ever been a wolf before. My father… he’s never been around, I don’t know what he was. I’m just a wolf.”

Ygritte sneered at him, even as her smell wafted hotter. “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

“You aren’t just a wolf,” Val said. She sniffed him once, her blue eyes steady, like she already knew the truth he suspected. Like she’d met that horrendous dragon from the woods before and recognized the same burning in Jon’s skin. “Most of us are half and half up here. Is your uncle the same? That why he brought you here? So you could figure out your other skin?”

It wasn’t. Not as far as Jon knew. Uncle Benjen had agreed because Jon was old enough now, because the rest of the pack had approved. Because Nana Lyarra had probably made it impossible to refuse Jon’s request. Jon had wanted to come here to escape, not because he’d expected to find anything worthwhile. Not a secret truth of his own blood he’d long suspected but never put into words. South of here, such an idea hadn’t been spoken about, wasn’t possible. Wolves mated with wolves, and bears with bears, and so on. Groups didn’t cross over with each other south of the Wall.

But that wasn’t the case in the true north. Amongst Tormund’s little band of wildling misfits, Jon soon found that halfers weren’t only common, but  _ normal _ . Even expected. Val was the first he met with the ability, her own mother a stalking shadowcat roaming the Skirling Pass leagues to the west. Her father had been a halfer, too. Eagle and owl-blooded, but she’d only inherited one from him. Jon met others as the days turned to weeks. Some below in the caves, others on the surface when they left the warm underground to hunt and play and fuck under the steely blue sky. 

He caught no whiff of Uncle Benjen anywhere nearby, try as he might. In some ways, Jon was glad. Amongst the wildlings, Jon discovered an easy camaraderie. He was normal to them, just another halfer, wolf-blooded and young. They liked his scent as the Mormonts had, talked about it like he was a warm pile of blankets or a roaring, bright campfire. With them, Jon didn’t need to hide. And they offered new knowledge as well, pried open his eyes to a vast world of shifters and all the forms people were born taking.

One man could shift into a fat tusked boar and a tiny white hare. Another into a magnificent mammoth and a raven. A creaky old fellow could even transform into an entire murder of crows, and like Jon’s direwolf form, his human form was albino. Giants mingled with the wildlings, sometimes, at the farthest northern reaches of the caves. It was with them that Jon met the strangest shifter he’d ever encountered. 

Varamyr Sixskins was the name he’d given himself. None of the other wildlings seemed keen to disagree. Sixskins was a small man in his human form, round-shouldered and bald like an egg. At just shy of sixteen, Jon towered over him by a solid half foot. His human skin seemed to be nothing more than a pasty layer of pale gray ash, stretched too tight over his bones, but it was his other skins that made the wildlings fear him.

“His blood’s all wrong,” Ygritte whispered, when she spotted the gaunt little man in the gathering. Most of the wildlings met above ground in the dawn to trade goods and food and news from their lands. Sometimes giants joined, but most of the people were made up of their own unique packs. But when Sixskins appeared, a hush took the others’ voices. “He’s too many at once, Jon Snow.”

“Too many what?” 

“Souls,” Ygritte said, her voice annoyed at his ignorance. “Smell him.”

Jon did, and the queerest scent hit him, like someone trying to bake a pie, but they’d done the insides all wrong; put meat and vegetables in one spot, then stewed berries in another, and still spiced apples in a third. All of them leaked together in a jarring mess. But each scent clinging to Sixskins wasn’t rich and homey. They smelled of decay and drying blood. Of theft. Unlike the rest of the shapeshifters, he had no pelt around his shoulders. Not even a sleek seal or walrus skin like some of the ice clans Jon had seen a few weeks prior. 

“Where’s his pelt?” Jon asked. 

In one instant, Sixskins smelled entirely human, mortal and diseased with age. The next, Jon could smell layers of corruption around him, like the thin rings of a tree that had survived years of drought. He smelled an eagle’s wings slicing through the cold air, a rotund snow bear ambling through the forest, a powerful shadowcat, and worst of all: wolves. Not just one, but three. 

_ Stolen _ , Jon realized. Each wolf smell came with the bitter tang of a life cut short. He grasped his shaggy, white pelt tight around himself; bared his human teeth on instinct, bristling.

“Some say…” Ygritte hesitated as Sixskins prowled the gathering, his nose twitching, searching for some pungent, intriguing scent he’d caught. “They say he was only a warg, mortal-born, that learned to prey on shifters. That he skins them and eats their flesh. Then drinks their blood and takes their second souls as his own. He took Orell.”

She nodded across the way, and Jon watched as Sixskins turned into a huge, golden eagle. He took flight in a great arc around the group, screeching, his great eyes scanning every face. 

“Who’s Orell?”

“You know  _ nothing _ , Jon Snow.”

Then Sixskins fixed his piercing eagle eyes on Jon and dove. As he hit the ground at Jon’s feet, Sixskins morphed into a mangy, brown-gray wolf, blind in one eye. Jon’s instincts screamed, and he shifted into his own wolf. As Ghost, Jon towered over the normal wolf. Even as the runt of his family’s pack, Jon’s still growing direwolf made Sixskins’s wolf look like a pup.

Some of the nearby wildlings fled. Others backed away and transformed into their own animal forms. Sixskins snarled as his old, one-eyed wolf, and Jon bared his teeth in a quiet challenge. His fur bristled as Ygritte shrunk to her flaming fox beside him, snapping her teeth.

After several tense moments, Sixskins rolled to his side in submission, his soft belly exposed. But when he returned to his human skin, Jon could see the mockery in his smile, the hungry defiance in his eyes.

“A direwolf. Don’t see many of those anymore,” Sixskins said in his croaky voice. “Albino, too, and still growing.”

Slowly, Jon changed to match his human skin. Ygritte did the same, but she wrapped herself around Jon’s arm, yanked him to her side. Her fingers clutched Jon’s white pelt.

“Leave him be, Sixskins. I claimed him first.”

Sixskins only chuckled, soft and cold, sniffed the frosty air. His eyes lingered on Jon like he was starving, trying to quench a taste he’d missed before. “You’ve got fire in your blood, boy.”

Then he walked away. Jon waited until his terrible scent had faded beyond his sense’s reach. Around the clearing, the wildlings that remained were packing up their goods and leaving. Ygritte held his arm until they were safe back in the caves underground. Jon was jittery all through supper and well after Tormund and Val had wandered off to curl up for sleep.

“I’m next,” Jon said, seated in the hot springs cave beside a steaming, warm pool. There wasn’t much he was certain about since he’d seen that massive dragon in the weirwood grove, but he was sure of this. Winter had arrived almost a month past. He’d still seen no sign of Uncle Benjen, but he wished more than anything for his familiarity then. “He wants my pelt, to take Ghost from me.”

He broke off, his voice cracking. Ghost was all he had left of home. His direwolf was a part of him, no matter how hard it was to maintain for long periods of time. Whatever his other half might be was lost, an empty pocket with a hole at the bottom.

“Well, he can’t have you, not ever.” Ygritte’s hand was tight around his. “You’re mine, Jon Snow, for all winter and then in the spring, too.”

And he knew what she meant. Ygritte had been rather obvious with her intentions since she’d saved his life. Her scent alone made it clear.

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“You don’t know much.” 

She kissed him, her lips dry but sweet against his. Her heady smell made him dizzy, made that rush of heat flood his belly right to his cock. He groaned as she pulled away, swallowed the lump of fear in his throat. For the last year, he’d convinced himself he didn’t need to know a woman. That mating was out of his reach and interests. All he knew was what he’d been told; the way two bodies could find pleasure as one, but he’d never daydreamed about it like Robb.

Back then, safe in Winterfell’s walls, knowing had been terrifying. Beyond the Wall, wondering was worse.

Ygritte stroked his cheek, the pronounced, tense tendons in his neck. She eased her sleek red fox fur from her shoulders, and laid it out on the ground beside them.

“I could teach you,” she said, her smile hopeful, scent intoxicating. “Just the once, if you don’t like it.”

His hands shook as Jon smoothed out his pelt alongside hers. Ygritte grinned and stretched out on their furs, took his hands and pulled him on top of her. 

“Come here, Jon Snow. By spring, I’ll make sure you know  _ something _ .”

Jon lost himself in the taste of her eager kiss.

 

* * *

 

One time proved to not be enough. Tormund had to drag them by their ears from the caves the next afternoon, and most days after that. As winter’s heart slid over the land, however, the wildlings retreated for good underground. Jon and Ygritte made a warm nest in their own cave, spent the majority of the winter naked and wrapped up in each other.

Jon had never known a feeling like it, to be pleasured and wanted. To sleep deep and contented each night, and to wake with his cock hard and Ygritte desperate to claim him. They marked each other when spring finally came, gentle teeth-curved nips on the other’s throat. Nobody dared to approach either of them, their scents already mingled as mates. As the wildlings moved above ground, many wandering into the wilderness and the mountains to satiate their own yearnings, Jon dreamt of a peaceful summer. Of this time next year, when he and Ygritte would have a little one of their own. They’d not bred yet, the timing not quite ripe, but Jon had agreed to try.

In truth, his cock had made most of the decision for him. Or, at least, convinced him to consider a future where he had a little family of his own. A sweet babe to bring south, to pass from his arms to his mother’s, and she would weep and smile at her first grandchild. His grandmother would thrill at his little one’s first shift from a babbling babe to a soft, newborn wolf pup.

He’d never thought of family as something to make and have. Family had always just been a pillar he revolved around. Revolved but never quite touched. Just as only the sun’s rays reached the world, but never the sun itself.

A month into spring, the snows still fell so far north of the Wall. Uncle Benjen was nowhere to be found, but Jon was happy. Truly, irreversibly happy for the first time since he was small. As Ygritte’s scent sharpened, began to bloom and surge with a needy arousal, Jon mentioned his mother for the first time.

“She’ll be so excited,” Jon told Ygritte, one afternoon as they dozed in the aftermath of a heated, rough fuck. They rested naked in the damp earth and wet dead grass beside one of the narrow lakes to the west of the Haunted Forest. Spring had finally melted most of the snow, but life hadn’t yet renewed the soil. “You’ll love her, and she’s going to spoil her first grandbaby rotten.”

Ygritte offered a sleepy, half-lidded smile. “Where’s she live? Somewhere near Hardhome?”

Jon had never heard that name before. He hesitated to answer and, for the first time, his lust and thrill at finding someone turned to anxiety. 

“No, she’s… south of here.”

“South? What’s she do, live in the Haunted Forest?”

His unease grew, and Ygritte’s sleepy look turned hard. They’d never discussed his pack nor his true home since that first day. He’d done his best to avoid the topic at first, and after a time, the wildlings’ acceptance had convinced him it wasn’t necessary to discuss it. But nobody north of the Wall had ever gone below it. Even the seal-shifters and walrus-changers in the Bay of Ice didn’t roam the seas south of it. Those in the north stayed in the north.

“No. She… my pack’s south of the Wall.” Ygritte’s entire body went stiff beside him. “They’re good people. Direwolves like me, they’ll welcome you.”

Yet even as Jon spoke the words, he wondered if they were true. Not only was Ygritte a wildling of the true north, but she was a fox-shifter, not a wolf. No Stark in all their history had ever mated outside of their kind.

_ Except Mama. She must have, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. _

Yet nobody ever talked about Jon’s origins, about his absent father of the south. As if he were their pack’s secret shame. 

“There’s nothing for us south of that Wall,” Ygritte snapped, her voice cold. “We stay here, this is where I belong, and you now, too.”

“But my mother, my family—”

“ _ We _ stay here. With  _ our _ pack.” She scoffed and pulled her clothes back on. When he tried to touch her, Ygritte jerked away. “You know  _ nothing _ , Jon Snow.”

And perhaps he didn’t, Jon decided as spring wore on. He was smart enough not to mention his mother again, nor his pack or the south at all. His silence made Ygritte relax once more, but when they mated for the first time while she was in heat, Jon’s heart was in his throat, not shining back at her from his eyes. He feared the idea of a child then as much as he hoped for it. Holding a son or daughter of his very own in his arms was a dangerous dream to have. 

Yet nothing came of their endless three days of fucking. Ygritte’s scent muddled back to the same softness of melting snowflakes it had always been, with no hint of anything new. 

She shrugged it off, accepting. “We got all spring, Jon Snow. Most don’t breed the first try.”

So they tried a second time. Then a third and a fourth. Every heat brought excitement then collapsed afterward in disappointment. As the other wildling women began to return with summer’s heat creeping into the wind, their bellies growing round and firm, Ygritte’s stayed flat. 

His sixteenth nameday arrived, on the cusp of the summer solstice, and with it, Jon’s dragon dreams returned. They began to plague him again in the deep dark of night, as he and Ygritte slept under a dome of stars. But his dreams had changed, too; came in full, fiery bellows every time he tried to make a child with Ygritte. He dreamt of the majestic jade dragon still, but at a distance now, found himself soaring on pale, young wings, still learning the air currents. Another dragon joined him as he coasted toward the sunrise horizon, a stunning onyx giant, her scales rimmed in scarlet.

A female dragon, the last of her kind.

How he knew that, even in dreams, Jon couldn’t say.

Every heat when he and Ygritte tried again, Jon dreamt of those magnificent, onyx scales shining like obsidian as the sun rose around them. They flew together, high in the sky over the sea and a molten island, dancing amongst the clouds. She called to him with a sweet, soft trill.  But when Jon tried to answer, his voice got stuck behind the trapped fire in his throat. He woke then, gagging and coughing so hard his lungs spasmed in his chest.

At first, Ygritte held him through the pain. With the start of summer’s robust heat warming the land, however, she only watched him hack and choke. They tried again. Even beforehand, somehow, Jon knew it would be their last time. That he was at fault for their barrenness. Whenever he thought that, his scent seemed to spark, the thin, lingering haze of smoke smearing the air. 

Two days after Ygritte’s heat faded, she found somewhere else to sleep. By the fifth day, she wouldn’t let Jon touch her pelt at all. At day eight, she told him she was heading north, alone.

“I can’t mate with you,” she told him, but she wasn’t angry or annoyed like she’d been the last few tries. Fear and uncertainty laced her voice tight like a knot. “You’re… wrong.”

“Wrong?” His voice faltered at the word, at the old feeling of dejection it brought back. “We can just try again, maybe somewhere else, in the south. Or more isolated maybe.”

“You still know nothing, Jon Snow. Can’t you smell it? It’s your  _ blood _ , that’s what’s left my belly flat. Every time we… you’ve always smelled like a campfire,” she told him. “Except when you’re inside me, then it’s like… it’s like your scent gets snuffed out.”

He’d never noticed it, was always too lost in her own smell and the heat of her body. Ygritte left that afternoon. Jon sat at the edge of the forest for hours, as the sun drifted lower in the sky. Tormund finally joined him at dusk, urged him to come back to the caves. He seemed agitated, restless and pacing, his eyes scanning the distant mountains.

“Best get in, Jon Snow. Something’s coming.” 

“Is it you and your she-bear?”

Tormund chuckled. “Nah, boy, and piss on Ygritte if she don’t want your cock. You gave it to her good as any, by the sounds she was always making. Come on.”

Shame filled his belly at her name. How he’d failed her, failed them and the brief months of happiness they’d shared. She’d been right. He  _ was _ wrong. A halfer, perhaps, but a broken one who’d never learned both sides of his soul.

“Later,” Jon told him, staring toward the western sky, the glowing orange curve as the sun sunk from sight. The air didn’t smell strange to him. “I’m gonna stay out and think a bit longer.”

His friend sighed and nodded, then turned back to the cave’s entrance amongst a great lump of rock. Jon clutched his pelt tight, pressed his nose into the shaggy fur, wishing for home. But even his pelt’s scent couldn’t remember how Winterfell had been anymore. He smelled of the north entirely now. 

His pack’s smell was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're two-thirds through Jon's personal journey. One more chapter with him, and then we'll have three Dany chapters to balance him. Then, together time! :D
> 
> Also, Embers is in progress, for those reading both! Hopefully, I'll get the next chapter up some time later this week or weekend. I've got the first scene finished (about 1.5k), so fingers crossed.
> 
> Until next time!


	3. Dragon Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is here!
> 
> The last of Jon, for now. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Dusk dimmed to a dark night. A new moon left the landscape blacker than pitch, the stars seemed duller, too. Jon sat alone, trying to will himself to move. Yet he knew once he did, it wouldn’t be to join Tormund, Val, and the other wildlings in the caves. A long journey through the Haunted Forest awaited him. Back to the Wall, and then home. To leap about with his younger cousins, to wrestle with Robb and meet his cousin’s new mate. Uncle Ned would continue to teach him a human’s work, toiling in Winterfell’s glass garden and how to string a bow. He could curl up against his mother’s side and smell her familiar, safe scent until his nose ached from overuse. In Winterfell, he would be safe under his grandmother’s protection again, with her gentle commanding presence guiding him.

He’d just stood to say his goodbyes, when he caught a foul smell on the wind. Decay. Rotting wolves and blood like a sheen of rust spreading over the grass. Sixskins was near. In all the excitement and lust of Ygritte, Jon had forgotten about the monstrous man.

Jon shifted to Ghost, let his senses direct him. Two leagues north, but not a pounding heartbeat of paws on the earth. Sixskins was high above, soaring through the black night, stalking closer.

_ Not this wolf, _ Jon thought as he raced into the treeline.  _ You’ll never have me. _

He ran like he never had before, sprinting through the dark. His legs were strong now, from trampling up mountainsides and across dark ravines, Ygritte at his side. All summer they’d experienced the true north together. His direwolf body had grown leaner and tougher. His shaggy fur had shed its winter layers. Tree branches whipped his sides as the forest deepened around him. Pine needles and leaves sticky with sap caught in his fur, but Jon only moved faster. Sixskins’s scent followed, growing closer and then farther, circling over the forest as Jon took a winding path through the thick trees. He called on Uncle Benjen’s teachings, remembered the safe scents of the weirwood groves, how they reminded him of his grandmother’s soot gray pelt.

Jon ran for hours. High above, the stars moved across the sky, but the eagle pursued. Panting and cramping, Jon slowed under the dense canopy. Sniffing, aching, dreading the dawn. High above and northwest, Sixskins drew nearer. Jon couldn't think of a plan for when he was cornered. Of how to combat a man with more skins than Jon had fingers on his burned hand. Alone, his direwolf was no match for a snow bear. Less so for the unpredictability of that snow bear shifting to wolves and a shadowcat and an eagle.

Then he caught a familiar smell, his body shaking in relief. Weirwoods. Their bloody sap like veins under the earth. Jon turned east toward them, and found the clearing easily. Every weirwood glowed pale in the night, their terrible, carved faces watching his approach. Exhausted, Jon stumbled to the edge of the grove, his control slipping. His human skin ached worse than his direwolf form.

_ Stay with the weirwoods if you get lost. They’ll always guide you home, Jon. _

Uncle Benjen might have been kneeling beside him, whispering in his ear. He was safest here, amongst the old trees’ magic. An eagle screeched above the scarlet leaves. Jon glanced up just in time to yell in pain. Sharp talons clawed his face, sliced his sweaty skin around his left eye. He knocked the bird aside, rolling into the weirwood grove.

Blood stung his eye and dribbled onto the dirt. A hush had fallen over the forest, Jon’s breathing slowing as he wiped at the blood and listened for a rush of feathered wings, the soft tread of a paw. Waited for the next attack that never came. He squinted around through his good eye, but the grove was empty. Nothing moved except for him.

It was then that he noticed them: the weirwoods’ carved faces, a single eye dripping bloody sap onto the grass. A sudden brightness hit Jon like a beam of sunlight. Only cold; an eerie strange green. 

A streak of flames, iridescent emerald green, filled the sky. Jon couldn’t see the dragon, but his blood thundered in his ears to the crescendo of its unsavory song stretching across the land. High above, the fire slammed into something.

The eagle screamed, then burst into flames. 

Jon watched it shift as it burned: a wolf, then a snow bear, a shadowcat, then a man falling from the sky as it tried to escape the fire.

The dragon soared in, teeth glittering in the firelight, and swallowed Sixskins whole. For a time after, it circled the weirwood grove, singing its wailing, terrible song. Jon shivered beneath the scarlet leaves. Each one felt a part of him, shifting in the warm summer breeze, sheltering him from the fiery rage above. Protecting him, somehow, Jon sensed, though he couldn’t explain it beyond the pain in his face from the eagle’s claws. The trees felt it, too. With no sight of Jon, the dragon’s song faded in a down pouring of ash, it’s wings carrying it north once again.

Silence filled the Haunted Forest. Jon sat in the weirwood grove, unmoving, listening and sniffing the air until dawn. He was shivering and shaking. A crust of dried blood covered the left side of his face. Above the sky was a golden-pink, not a single wisp of smoke to mark the night’s hunt. The dragon did not return.

Once the sun reached the treetops, Jon transformed into Ghost and continued south. He didn’t sleep; kept his ears perked for the rushing sound of wings, of fire boiling up a great dragon’s throat. It was two days before he spotted the Wall through the dense foliage, and a third before he was out of the woods. Before him, the Wall glittered like a great crystal rainbow under the summer sun, weeping rivers. As he watched, a huge sheet of ice sludged off and crashed into the bare land between the forest and the Wall. He followed the charred scent of Castle Black’s stones and timber east, finally reaching the tunnel at sunset.

The Mormonts always left it open, even during the summer when they returned to Bear Island. When Jon passed through it was dark and empty, the torches snuffed out, with only the ancient scent of magic and dragonflame pressed into the ice. His nose was sharper than it had been, picked up a depth to the dragonflame he hadn’t before. Old still, but heavy with icy flame of the brightest green. A relic of the dragon beyond the Wall.

On the south side, Castle Black was alive with people. Jon hesitated at their sounds, the maddening tangle of their varying smells that started a dull pain between his eyes. He’d not been around so many people in a long time. With the wildlings, they moved only in small packs: four or five to a group, at most. Ygritte had been his most constant companion, Tormund and Val on occasion. 

He found the Mormonts filled the crumbling castle, much to his surprise. Normally, their summers were spent on Bear Island. A fresh, young bear cub was amongst them, newborn and male. Every scent was more intricate than before, layers upon layers of smells and ideas and identities. Then Jon caught her scent, the best smell of all. Morning mist on scarlet leaves, the muddy earth coming to life for the spring.

_ Mama. _

He tried to whine, throat aching but silent. His tail thumped the tunnel’s wall, curling high into the air. As ever, his wolf voice was stubbornly absent, left a raw, dry feeling in his throat.

Uncle Benjen and Uncle Ned’s were with her. Everyone stopped at the sight of him exiting the tunnel. Jon’s mother was across the yard, in a heated argument with her brothers. Benjen had a trio of deep scars across his face. Uncle Ned looked haggard and thinner. All three of them stopped as the sight of him. Jon pawed the ground toward them, hesitant, his tail curling under him toward his belly; frantic for their affections.

“Jon?” Uncle Ned looked stunned at the sight of him.

His mother didn’t wait for an answer. Despite the changes in his scent, and almost a year apart, she knew it was him. Lyanna shifted as she ran, morphing into her pale silver direwolf, eyes an amber sunlight brighter than her smile. Jon ran to her. 

They slammed together, Lyanna whining and whimpering. Jon let her tackle him and lick his wounds. She didn’t stop until his cheek fur was no longer stiff with blood. By then, Jon was curled up against her, his face buried in the soft fur of her neck. Both Uncle Benjen and Uncle Ned joined them, shifting to their direwolves. They sniffed him from snout to tail, nudging at his cheeks, nipping his pale ears. 

Jon stayed with them, buried in a pile of furry wolf bodies like he had as a pup. He couldn’t make a sound as Ghost, but he shivered with joy at their touches, the smell of his pack soaking into his fur again.

He was home. Yet, so much had changed, so many new questions had come back with him.

It was the Old Bear, Jeor Mormont, that finally came out to get them inside for the night. The rest of the Mormont family had dispersed, but the Old Bear brought them into a sitting room in the King’s Tower.

“We’ve been searching for you for months,” Lyanna told him. She held him close, even then, seemed convinced that if she let him go he would disappear once again. “Benjen came back in the spring, bleeding and beat up, and… gods, Jon, where have you  _ been _ ?”

He hesitated to explain. Beginning was difficult, but Uncle Ned’s gentle encouragement helped.

“Go on, son, all that matters is you’re here and safe now.”

So Jon talked. He told them of the wildlings, of how they’d adopted him into their pack, welcomed him like nobody else ever had. Then about the halfers beyond the Wall, and the horror of Varamyr Sixskins. Ygritte was where he faltered, though. Her name passing his lips was like a dagger in his chest. He didn’t mention the dragon.

“Ygritte?” Lyanna stroked his cheek, scratched gently at the patchy beard growing in. “You found a mate, Jon?”

“She… it didn’t work out.”

His uncles exchanged a glance, but said nothing. His mother’s face told a different tale. She wasn’t surprised, looked resigned to his words.

“Next season, in the south, you’ll find someone. Not up here,” Uncle Ned told him, ruffling Jon’s curls. “At least you didn’t make an ass of yourself like Robb.”

Lyanna laughed, and Uncle Benjen grinned, his scars stretching across his lips. They still looked fresh, only half-healed and scabbed, but older than the cuts around Jon’s eye.

“What’d he do?”

Uncle Ned told the tale over supper. Of Robb, too eager and rushing, finding his first mate just south of the Neck, a young human woman. He’d promised her his hand, then continued south on his own to explore and come back north with a different woman. Jeyne, his uncles said, a petite brown wolf from a southern pack. The human woman had been furious, chasing Robb and Jeyne through the swamps of the Neck with her brothers and uncles. They’d finally lost them in the ruins of Moat Cailin, but Robb’s embarrassment and Jeyne’s annoyance had kept until they arrived at Winterfell.

“She likes him well enough, idiot that he is,” Lyanna finished. 

“He was overly eager,” Uncle Ned said, but he sounded more exasperated than Jon had ever heard him.

“His cock was. Makes me glad my son has better priorities.” Lyanna gave Jon a smile and a quick squeeze, left her arm draped over his pelt-covered shoulders.

“But they’re both okay?”

She nodded. “They’re back with the pack, in Winterfell. Jeyne wants to ring his neck most days, but she’s a good soul. Very forgiving. Submissive as could be, but Robb adores her. Soon enough their little one, too.”

“That’s great.” Jon smiled as gloom settled on his shoulders. He was glad for his cousin, of course, but his success only reminded Jon of his own unplanned attempt and subsequent failure.

Ygritte’s face swam before him, distant and disgusted.  _ You’re wrong. _

He glanced at his mother, tried to force his questions past the choking pain in his throat, the shame of Ygritte’s rejection, of his failure to be normal, even among the wildlings. He couldn’t, not then.

Jon carried his silent shame all the way back to Winterfell. It was locked inside him, in that strange, stiff and swollen, knot that housed his wolf voice. Waves of bitterness came with his silence, a hollow, driving anger thick in his belly. 

His shame was only made worse by his mother and uncles. All three of them had the truth he lacked. The one he feared to ask for. Jon could see it in their eyes, knew his shame was no secret, no matter his muteness. His mother kept watching him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Benjen and Ned lingered close to him, too, their scents heavy with worry. They all knew. Perhaps not the nature of his inability, but of the missing half in his blood. 

His pack’s worst kept secret was him.

His little cousins howled in welcome when they arrived. Jon was buried under their shaggy warm bodies, licked and bit and cuddled until Nana Lyarra intervened. Everyone dropped to their bellies in submission. Her scent plugged Jon’s nostrils, a woody strong pine with a smooth brushstroke of scarlet weirwood sap. Dominate, strong. Not overpowering, but resilient and commanding.

Jon rested on his back before her, offering his belly; let her sniff his ears and chin and burnt paw. His fur had grown back over it since encountering the dragon, but the skin beneath remained a dull black in wolf form. Half a year later, it still smelled charred. She took her time looking him over, gave each paw a long series of sniffs. He’d changed, a subtle shift, but he was officially a mating man of their pack. A difference in his scent was expected. But her approval was paramount.

After several tense minutes, Nana Lyarra nuzzled his cheek, nipped his soft ears in acceptance. In welcome. 

He met Jeyne then, trotting at Robb’s side in wolf form. Unlike their pack, she was a regular wolf, slighter and muddy brown. Her belly was distended already, Robb’s and hers scents churning inside. A mixture of the two as their little one grew in preparation for the world. She was shy and sweet, bent in submission to his greater size and place in the pack’s hierarchy.

Robb greeted him with a happy growl, fangs tugging at his scruff. Jon returned the gesture, surprised to find they were almost the same size now. As boys, they’d always been similar in stature, both as humans and pups. But the early changes of manhood had altered that. Robb’s legs had stretched, his direwolf torso swelling with muscle, while Jon clung to a slighter, leaner build. Now, he was eye level with his cousin, his red eyes reflected in Robb’s paler yellow gaze.

After their pack greetings, the Starks shifted back to their human skins. All except little Bran and Arya. The pair raced around the castle’s yard, snapping and holding a howling contest. Both had grown significantly since Jon had been away, not small pups anymore, but transitioning into young wolves. Their legs were lanky and unsteady, too long for their small bodies. 

Sansa, too, had grown, but in different ways. His cousin was thirteen now, her fur a soft beautiful auburn. Her human hair shined like copper, her limbs slim and long. She was almost eye level with him and Robb, despite their own continued growth.

Rickon was the closest to how Jon remembered him. Small, dark-furred, and wild. When they all settled into the hall for supper, he ate a few bites Auntie Cat forced into his mouth, then scrambled into Jon’s lap and curled up as a shaggy black pup.

They all still loved him, treated him the same as they always had. Somehow, that only made him angrier.

 

* * *

 

Summer’s end slipped quickly into autumn. For once, Uncle Benjen remained with the pack. His wound healed slowly, a thick trio of slices across his face from forehead to chin. He’d encountered a pack of wildling shadowcats in the months after he and Jon had been separated; gotten on the worse end of their claws. They’d both returned with healing scars, some more visible than others.

Of everyone, Benjen seemed the most determined to keep Jon in sight. Every day, Uncle Benjen made up some reason to do whatever Jon did. Whether it was roaming the godswood or remarking the pack’s hunting territory or simply teaching their littlest members how to run stealthily through the forest. Without his voice, Jon could not teach them the pack’s howl, though he knew the octaves by heart. Uncle Benjen was by his side constantly. 

Nana Lyarra stuck close by, too. She raised her tail whenever he drew near, tall and proud, until he rolled onto his back and offered his belly. He’d never had his scent checked so much as in the months after his return. His tail, his neck, she even sniffed between his toes.

Uncle Ned said nothing; watched him from afar. Some days, Jon found his uncle staring at him, lost in his thoughts. His mother did the same, but she seemed to be steeling herself for something. The conversation Jon longed for and dreaded.

Nobody seemed to trust him anymore. As if he’d become a stranger in only half a year outside the pack. Yet Uncle Benjen spent most of the year away, and never endured the same.

Robb treated him as he always had at least, and Arya, Rickon, and Bran. They joked and played and let him pile up with them for naps under the late autumn sun. But Sansa didn’t. Like their elders, she seemed uncertain of his scent now. She approached with caution instead of enthusiasm. Auntie Cat suddenly kept her distant, too.

Likewise, Jeyne seemed confused by him every time he was near. She crouched before him, her tail tucked if she was in wolf form like she would before an unfamiliar alpha. As a woman, she refused to meet his eyes, rested a protective hand on her growing belly if he drew too close.

Jon bristled at all of it. His anger was like a shrieking rat, caught in a bucket pressed into his bare tummy. Desperate to escape as a torch was held to the metal, forcing it to burrow into his guts. He tried to keep his temper in check and ignore his muddled grief and fears. Something had been wrong, with Ygritte, beyond the Wall. He hadn’t expected it to follow him home. Not like this. 

But his pack’s skittishness wasn’t alone in disturbing him.

Jon’s dragon dreams pursued him, too. No matter when he slept, nor for how long, he found himself soaring through clouds and moist sea air. He was never alone then, his onyx companion keeping to his side. She seemed to thrive in his smell, crooned softly when they landed on a jagged outcropping of sheer rock in the afternoon sun. An island, somewhere in a great salty sea. Every landing, they curled up together, like two scaly cats, their throats rumbling with joy and contentment.

Waking from that each morning, to his empty bed and scalding lungs, hurt Jon more than Ygritte’s words ever could. More than his family’s uncertainty and sudden mistrust.

He lost his secret dragon every day. Her dry kindling scent, her sweet, unfinished song that trilled like crackling flames, the hint of lemony citrus and fierce embers on her scales.

Jon told nobody. Words failed him everytime he considered talking to anyone: about his dreams, his fears, his buried shame. As winter blanketed the land, Jon shied away from the pack. He kept to his chamber, wandered on his own about the weirwood grove, ignored the hunting howls calling for him to join. Instead, he stayed inside, slept and dreamt of warming his magnificent pale wings on windswept cliffs, of holding her heat and fury and joy against his skin.

Winter’s solstice brought a break in the snow. Despite the shortage of daylight, his grandmother took their pack on a hunt, Rickon’s first. Jeyne stayed behind, her belly seven moons swollen. Jon kept to his chambers to mope and sleep, but Lyanna remained, too. She insisted on staying for Jeyne, but Jon suspected she had other reasons. He watched the pack disappear into the wolfswood from his window, then let sleep find him once again. 

His dreams were dangerous. Wings spread out from his shoulders, steady and powerful, glowing like pearls in the sun. He sped toward the clouds, diving and ducking and weaving. After a few flashy maneuvers, Jon coasted on the wind, glancing about. She was here somewhere, always close by. But no hint of citrus filled his scaly nostrils. Her powerful dragon song was absent.

His neck spines prickled uneasily. Jon shook his snout, trying to shake her scent into his senses, to follow to wherever she was now.

And then Jon heard it, faint and strangely altered.

_ Her song, my dragon’s song. _

Jon dived toward the sound, found the landscape a sandy, yellow-brown. Their island wasn’t in sight, only a long coastline of arid dryness, pyramids in the distance. He scanned the land, finally spotting her dominant dark shape, tried to return her call, but his voice wasn’t there. Someone else answered her, a cocksure laugh as she shifted to her human skin, shrinking from Jon’s sight. 

Panic hit him like a rock from a catapult. Not her, too; he could never lose her, no matter how far apart. His right wing faltered, and suddenly the tip was alight with emerald fire. Jon tried to scream, but no sound could leave him. He tumbled toward the sand, burning. Tried to right himself with his good wing, level out his descent with his spines and tail and then—

_ “What are you waiting for, Captain? I am yours.” _

Jon woke, screaming and disoriented. His arms wouldn’t work right as he tried to rip his way out of his bedding. Then he choked. Black smoke wafted from his nostrils, his panting mouth. Beneath him, his spine curled, felt like solid iron studs down his back, caught in his pelt. The bedding ripped as he jerked upright. A burst of agony ran through his pelt, too, and then Jon felt it. All over his back were hard, piercing spikes, overwhelming his senses as they brushed the chilly air and cut at his wolf skin. With every breath, they moved, like a dozen carving knives threading through a hunk of meat. 

His door burst open. Lyanna rushed in, frantic, coughing in the haze of smoke filling the room. She took one look at him, sitting upright amongst his bleeding pelt, ripped blankets and mattress, his back covered in thorny scarlet spines, and his arms… gods, his  _ arms _ .

“Shh, don’t panic, love. Just relax.”

“ _ Relax _ ?” 

His voice was a strangled yelp as he wiggled what had once been his arms. Stumpy wings were in place of his muscular human arms. Tiny, frail, uncomfortable. Jon tried to shake them off, his breathing erratic as his dream fell in around him. Tears built in his eyes, began to course down his cheeks.

“Jon, breathe. Shh, sweet wolf.”

“S-she—gods, I  _ lost _ her. She’s found—I can’t… I can’t I can’t I  _ can’t _ .”

His devastation crumbled him. Jon hardly understood it then, the deep, tragic ache in his chest, like some part of him had been stolen, handed off to another. Like he was back in the Haunted Forest, with Sixskins, Ghost being ripped from him. All at once, his arms and back crackled back to soft human flesh. Jon cried out at the sudden spike of pressure, the belch of smoke that escaped him. Lyanna reached for him, and the brush of her fingertips to his shoulder was like a jolt of lightning across his skin.

“Get away!”

He snapped at her, a boiling rage churning in his gut. Jeyne appeared in his periphery as he expanded, against his will, into his wolf skin. Jon gnashed his teeth at both of them, a silent snarl holding back his lips. Patches of warm blood matted his back. Lyanna offered a steady hand to him, but Jon bristled. He shook his head over and over, tried to get rid of everything: his rage, the pain and fear, anything that felt human. From outside, he heard the rest of the pack returning. Pups howling, high and shrill and happy. 

His mother’s fingers brushed his forehead and Jon snapped his teeth at her in warning. Just her touch was overwhelming—terrifying. Behind her, Jeyne bolted from the room, a musk of weakness and fear trailing after her. Jon grimaced and twisted about, tried to shake the scents and noises out.

“What’s this?”

Nana Lyarra appeared in the doorway, a little winded like she’d run upstairs to his room. She took in the scene, Lyanna before him, failing to calm him, and Jon, bloody fur raised, his tail high and teeth bared, his scent an erratic wave cresting around the room. 

“Mom, he… a dream,” Lyanna said. Somehow, that word seemed to have as much meaning to them as it did to Jon. “Jon, it’s okay. Please, I’ll explain, I will, but calm down.”

His lips peeled back at her words. Like an order, a demand of him. Of  _ him _ .

Nana Lyarra was on him in an instant, morphing into her old, huge smoky wolf, Thunder. She caught his lunge, snarling and biting at his neck. But he was beyond reason in that moment, exhausted by fear and isolation, emboldened by shame and fury. For several minutes they wrestled, nails and teeth ripping fur from each other’s coats. Then her scent surged into his nose, heavy and dominating, a waft of pine so intense Jon hesitated. His mind caught up with him like a tide crushing him into the surf. She seized him by the hind leg, her teeth breaking his skin, digging into the muscle.

If he could have made a sound, Jon would have shrieked in submission. He kicked himself free, trembling and cowering beneath the window. Nana Lyarra, alpha of their pack, rumbled in warning. Throaty, deep, a sound like a storm splintering the sky in half. His tail curled under him, eyes blinded by tears. He stumbled back into his human skin, his wolf pelt drenched in his own blood, shaking so hard he couldn’t keep his footing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Sobs wracked his body, and a few of those stiff spines reappeared, pushed through his back like daggers slicing through his skin. His pelt slipped off. Jon howled at their sharpness; they added an entire new layer to his senses, an understanding of the air’s wavering movements, the ice crystals invisible to the eye but still felt. He curled into himself, crying.

Lyanna dropped down beside him, almost touched his skin, then seemed to think better of it.

“Shh, relax, my sweet wolf.” She lay down beside him, whispered kind assurances. “You’re going to be just fine, love. I promise.”

“What’s  _ wrong _ with me?”

“Nothing, you’re just… changing, Jon. In so,  _ so _ many ways.”

“I don’t wanna. I don’t know how.  _ Please _ .”

Thunder approached, her scent commanding but kind. Tough, but achingly familiar. She pressed her snout to Lyanna’s neck, then settled on the hard, cold wood beside him. Her tongue lapped carefully at his torn breeches, his bleeding thigh. Jon shuddered, but slowly relaxed. Under their care, his body grew heavy, his eyes sleepy. The spines on his back slipped back under his skin, left him feeling raw and overexposed. Together, his mother and grandmother carried him back to bed, draped his pelt over a chair by the fire. They didn’t leave him, though, stayed with him as he calmed.

Nana Lyarra shifted back to her human self, cradled him to her side under her pelt. Mama shifted to her sweet Winter, her fur a soft, warm silver. She rested her head on his belly, better than any pile of blankets or roasting fire in the grate. Jon sunk into their comfort, let Nana stroked his dark curls, her thumb brushing over his scruffy jaw.

“You need a shave soon,” she told him. 

“Yes, Nana.”

“And to get your leg and back cleaned.”

“Okay, Nana.”

“And to stop running from your nature, Jon.”

She stared down at him, fond and sad and firm. Jon squirmed. How could he be all of himself when he was missing half?

“I’m not running,” he muttered. 

“You are.” She kissed his forehead as Mama nuzzled his belly. “I always knew it would be you, ever since you were small. But then you shied away and hid yourself as you grew. I’d hoped going north, beyond the Wall, might help.” Nana Lyarra laughed. “I suppose it did, in some ways. You’re stronger, bolder, and your scent, gods…”

“It’s wrong,” Jon said, ashamed. “I’m sorry. I’m not a proper direwolf, and I’m a halfer and—”

“You’re an alpha, too, Jon. No matter what else you might be, you are the one who will lead our pack when I am gone.” 

“But—I can’t even  _ howl _ . And Robb is—”

“Robb is like Ned.” She pinched his nose, not unkindly. “You’ve got the best nose of any of us, Jon. Can’t you smell the truth?”

He’d never considered it. Everything she said seemed impossible. Jon had never been an alpha, more dominant than his younger cousins perhaps, but that was part of the age hierarchy in their pack. His mother and uncles had never submitted to him before. Nobody ever had, except…

Jeyne. And Sansa shied from him now, skittish like she detected a greater presence she didn’t know how to interact with. Because he’d not established how he stood with either of them. Had not done as an alpha should.

“But… I thought Robb would be next.” Even then, his cousin made the most sense to him. “He’s strong, dominant, has a mate now.”

“There’s more to being a pack’s alpha than dominance, Jon. Jeyne is lovely, and perfect for Robb, yes, but she’s not alpha material.”

“But Robb—”

“Chose a mate that suited his place in the pack, even if he does not realize it yet. Both him and Ned are dominant, and each would take up the leadership if we had nobody else, but they are not true alphas. Not like us.”

She forced him to hold her gaze, and Jon did, even as his eyes watered. 

“You are next since  _ someone _ refuses to take a life-long mate.” 

Nana Lyarra’s gaze slipped to his mother, still resting in her direwolf form. Lyanna huffed.

“Mama, you’re an… an alpha?”

She nipped at his hand, closed her teeth gently around his wrist.

“Not entirely, but she could have been.” Nana sighed. “Jon, how much do you remember of your grandfather?”

Not much was the truth. Grandpop Rickard had died before Rickon had been born. Bran had just begun walking when their grandfather had gotten sick. Both Jon and Robb had been seven. Just pups still learning and growing.

“He smelled good,” Jon finally said. “Like a forest and a field of winter roses on a mountainside.”

Nana chuckled, kissed his forehead again. “Yes, he did. You have a damn good nose to remember that. What else?”

“He…well…” The obvious struck Jon hard. “He was an alpha, too. You and him, together.”

“Yes, that’s right. He and I, together, Jon. Not only me or only him. Both, as a unit, a mated pair. It takes two to lead the pack, to share the responsibility and support one another. That’s why Robb will not. Jeyne, his chosen mate, could not handle such a weight. The pack would fracture. Your grandfather and I never dominated each other, we were equals. Yes, sometimes he held a higher role and other times I did, but we always worked together. Our strengths bettered each other, never weakened. The pack is only as good as its alpha pair is.”

Jon considered that, his thoughts drifting unwillingly back to Ygritte. She’d been dominant for certain, had taken his inexperience and shyness as a chance to dominate him on many intimate occasions, but she hadn’t been the pack’s alpha. Tormund had. A solid, commanding presence that offered reassurance and order. Like Nana Lyarra. She was the calm center of their pack, leading silently but firmly.

Could he really be the same?

“You’ll need a mate soon, another alpha.”

_ Onyx flashed in the summer sun, glittering like a great wedge of obsidian. Ripples of crimson curled at the soft edge of her scales, brightest around great, slitted violet eyes. Her song echoed through his mind, but altered for another now, lost to him… _

She was gone.

“I lost her.”

His mother pawed up his chest, tucked her face into his neck for comfort. Jon blinked back tears, but found them impossible to stop. Nana Lyarra considered him.

“You mean Ygritte, the fox-shifter beyond the Wall?”

“No, I—”

His voice cracked like a log splintering. 

“Lyanna, it’s past time.”

He turned at his grandmother’s firm command, then back to his mother as she pulled away from him. She shifted slowly to her human skin, clutching her silver pelt around herself.

“Mama?”

“I was foolish to hope you would only be a direwolf,” she said after a moment. “Jon, your father was—”

“A dragon.” Jon swallowed, his chest thrumming with sudden nerves. 

“You know? But how? Have you been shifting like today without saying anything, love?”

“No, no. I…” He took a deep breath, his next words left no room for turning back. “I’ve dreamt about him, a great green dragon, calling to me. Like his voice… like he’s trying to reach me with his song.”

“You’ve heard—” Lyanna gasped, wiped at her eyes before reaching for his hand. Her eyes seemed to sing with his father’s melody, melancholic and beautiful. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was scared. I didn’t understand what it meant, not until…”

Until he’d seen that monstrous, dark dragon beyond the Wall. Jon settled himself and finally told them. For the better part of an hour, Jon spoke. About his first, fleeting dragon dreams of his father, of the scents he’d picked up at Castle Black, and then the horrible beast he’d encountered twice. He told them about his failures with Ygritte when they’d tried to create a child, of the new dreams his mating had brought. His fits of burning, choking breath when he woke without her fire beside him. But more than anything, he talked about  _ her _ . The black dragon of his dreams, her calming, sturdy presence, her lemony, brimstone scent, how it felt to dance across the skies by her side.

“Oh, sweet wolf, that’s  _ wonderful _ .” His mother hugged him tight, crying. “She’s your mate, Jon. Another dragon, one who can help you understand how to be one, too.”

“I lost her.”

His chest felt like a cavern, hollow and echoing. He flinched away from his mother’s embrace.

“She’s found someone else, some human man, and I…”

“Only if she takes him as a true mate.” Lyanna made him look at her before she continued. “Jon, I admit, I don’t know much. Your father and I had such a short time together, but mating for dragons is different. So very different from the rest of us. A dragon takes a life-long mate like most wolves, but it’s not the same. They’re bound together, until death, if they conceive a child. A bond that cannot be broken or unchosen.”

“And I can’t do that,” Jon reminded her, his cheeks burning. “Ygritte and I tried. Gods, Mama, we must have tried a dozen times.”

“As a wolf mates, not as a dragon.” She squeezed his hands in hers, kissed his knuckles. “I always wondered what parts of your father you might have. If you would be able to shift as both, or just one. Jon, this is a part of him, the blood of the dragon.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You can only mate as a dragon does. Once a year, on the summer solstice, with trust and commitment, and a… well, Rhaegar, your father, called it a dance. It was complicated for us, and I didn’t understand parts of what he did, but perhaps she can.”

_ Rhaegar. _

His father’s name. It was the first time she’d ever said it, a new chunk of knowledge slotting into place. Hope built on top of it, as much as uncertainty.

“His name was Rhaegar?”

“Yes.” Lyanna sniffed and smiled. “He was lovely, Jon. He would have adored you, despite how broody he was. But, after he and I chose each other… his father didn’t approve. Not at all. A old dragon, half-mad. He tried to attack me. Rhaegar intervened, and I ran. I fled north to keep you and me safe. The last I saw, your father fell from the sky. They both did, burning and screaming. His father tried to follow me north, but I slipped into the caves north of the Neck.”

“And it was only them?”

“He mentioned his mother, and a younger brother I think.”

Then who was his black dragon? Was she even real or simply his mind willing a perfect companion to life while he denied part of himself? 

Yet she felt real, every time he woke in his dreams to fly with her. Her warm scales curled up with his on their favorite cliff, the sure rumbling of her joy at having him with her. The hot, molten scent mixed with sparks of lemon.

“She’s real, Jon. Your father dreamt of you once. Dragon dreams are never wrong.”

“Then she’s lost to me,” Jon said. “She’s chosen someone else. I  _ felt  _ it.”

“You listen to me, Jon. Whatever you felt or saw of her and this human man, it’s winter. Neither of you can take a life-long mate until the summer solstice. If you go south, if you can find her…”

_ What if she’s dreamt of me, too? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is where we leave Jon, next up is Dany! For a whole three chapters/weeks. It's time to hang with some dragons :D
> 
> Same time next week, a Christmas present for those who celebrate!
> 
> Cheers!


	4. Dragonflame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to welcome Dany into the story! :D
> 
> As an aside, Jon and Dany's introductory chapters run, more or less, parallel to each other. So, we're traveling back to Dany's childhood for a bit, eventually meeting up with where we left Jon by the end of Chapter 6. They're also the same age instead of Jon being 8-9 months older like in canon.
> 
> Also, Drogo is briefly in this chapter at the end, but I promise he does not get anything close to a happy ending. He doesn't marry Dany or anything else either. Just a flash in the pan.
> 
> So, enjoy, and Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Dragons were built for solitude.

From a young age, Dany understood the contradictions of her family’s existence. Half dragon, half human. Her mother, Rhaella, had always told her the two never should have become one. That their existence was equal parts destruction and monumental joy.

“Dragons are of the mind as much as the body,” her mother would say. “Before you can shift, all of you must accept your fire. We are the blood of the dragon, meant for the flames and the sky, but human, too. Meant to love and bond, to root ourselves to the earth. We are not like the other shapeshifters, Daenerys. Magic runs wild in our blood. One day, you will have to reconcile your halves, or lose yourself for good.”

Dragons  _ were _ wild, grew best when alone. They soared far and wide across the lands, ranging for hundreds of leagues, as far as their impressive wings could carry them. No dragon did well in confinement, and too many in a small area led to fights and flames. To their kind destroying themselves. Mating was rare, offspring even less common. Couples chose each other for all their remaining years, meeting only once a year in most instants, on the summer solstice. Mated pairs that lived their prolonged lives together were rarer still. The last had been centuries ago, so far back their names were forgotten.

Humans were the exact opposite. They lived in groups, were safest and most productive together. They paired off, sometimes for a short while, other times for a lifetime. Once they found a home, most humans stayed put. Raised babies to kids and kids to adults, watched their children’s children do the same. They searched for belonging, for a trust so intimate it became irreplaceable when lost. 

Dragons seeked none of that. Yet her family was both combined. Two souls in one mind, like every other shapeshifter, tethered to a softer body and skin. To an existence that silently pined for a sense of belonging and companionship while fire roared beneath. 

Dany learned as a girl that dragons were different from the rest. Reptilian, massive and scaly, covered in spines, horns, and spikes, their breath a searing flame capable of turning living bones to dust. They had no pelts to wrap themselves in like the wolves or bears or lions. Instead they kept their spikes and horns in their human skin, if they wished, to warn others away.

First learning to shift to her dragon hurt. Bones popped and stretched, fingers arched and lengthened to wing bones. Thumbs ballooned into a clump of muscle for her grasping wing claw. Arms bent the wrong direction as the skin stretched thin enough to fill out her wings. Every part of her grew and grew and  _ grew _ when she changed. 

Dany’s spikes and fleshy neck frills were the first to come through, sharp cuts as they broke through the soft human skin of her back and shoulders and neck. Wings sprouted next. After her first dragon dream, Dany had woken to find her arms were parchment thin black wings, her wing joints aching where tiny human shoulders had been. She was only four, but her brother, Rhaegar, had said she was ready. 

“When wings appear, a dragon nears.” 

He rocked her in his lap, fingers gently stroking her little spikes and fleshy frills, his left hand wiping her tears. Almost an hour passed before Dany returned her arms to normal.

Comfort was necessary as a dragon grew and prepared to break free. Dragon-shifting hurt until it was fully learned, was an unnatural molding and stretching of a human figure. Curling up on her mother, brother, or uncle’s chest, their soft fingers rubbing her spikes, allowed Dany to get familiar with touches beyond air currents, to wear down her spikes natural oversensitivity to temperature extremes; to delight in pleasant sensations. Dragons learned to rumble then, so peaceful and content at simple touches that their voices turned to gentle, soothing purrs, bellies swollen with joy. 

Her fire dream arrived within the year. While her family was surprised, they were relieved, too. Younger was better, easier to learn a dragon’s form. Those first painful contortions were duller with her still growing bones. She’d woken like she was burning, her skin steaming, her violet eyes slitted and too large for her tiny human head. Horns adorned her temples, little blunted buds of soft, malleable cartilage. As she aged, they would harden and curve, a unique curl and shape of her life’s journey. For now, they were tiny and soft and creamy white. Mama had held her all night until her shakes had passed, soothing her fire, then inquired after her dreams.

“We made a nest,” Dany said, belly rumbling with her soft purrs as Mama’s fingers stroked her spikes. “Outside, with pillows and blankies and a big white fur that smelled like hot ash. He wanted to see the fiery star, too, Mama. It burst way up in the sky, but he fell asleep. I flew right up to it, though, ‘cause I’m a dragon!”

“Of course you are, little love.” Mama had kissed her new horns, then her nose tip until Dany giggled. “Who was this boy you saw?”

Dany didn’t know, and the realization made her happy purrs stop. She hadn’t seen his face. He’d only been a silhouette shifting in the shadows. A boy with a pretty white fur. Kind and sweet, his voice brighter than the stars.

The next morning, her mother and brother helped her shift fully for the first time. Dany wobbled unsteadily in the air, Rhaegar beneath her as his great jade beast if she fell, her mother’s majestic red scales at her side, and the sea further below still, a wet, splashy net if she should break from her dragon skin. She was the youngest to succeed at only five. Rhaegar had been almost ten for his first. Mama and old Uncle Aemon had been nearing maturity for theirs. 

But Dany was different. She always had been. Her dragon was onyx and fire, dominating the clouds. Once she found her wings, nothing could keep her on the ground.

 

* * *

 

Dany’s family was small, could not have survived if it had grown too large. Of all the dragons that had once roamed the world, from the shadows of Asshai to the Valyrian peninsula, her family were the last. Just herself, an ancient, blind uncle, her wary mother, and her melancholy brother.

Targaryens, together, but separate, too.

They lived near enough to each other to still be close, but in an established harmony of isolation. Each of her elders had a hill of their own, named for the ancestors who had brought their family to their home. Rhaenys, Aegon, and Visenya. A trio of hills, a fathoms deep lair in each. Those long dead dragons had burrowed into the dirt and granite and down into the gloomy, hot catacombs beneath the world’s crust. Each hill had grown up since those lost days, with towers and turrets jutting out of their domes and sheer, rocky sides.

Old Uncle Aemon was withered and shriveling, his eyes paler than moons. He lived in the cold halls of Visenya’s Hill, a dragon’s lifetime of gathered knowledge at his shaky fingertips. When Dany had been smaller, still learning to sprout her wings, Uncle Aemon had told her a million secrets. Every day he had gifted her with history and songs, music and magic; with dark and strange truths.

“We were meant to wander, to seek our other halves,” he told her, after her first spikes appeared. “To spread magic across the world, Daenerys, not huddle beneath these hills. But the world grew too small, and us too many.”

“We’re the only ones left now, aren’t we?” She’d never dared to ask before, but hearing the words left her scared.

“We are, sweet girl, and you…” 

Uncle Aemon sighed, heavy with sadness. Dany reached up to rub his curved, bone white horns. Once, they’d been a beautiful, pale lilac, but old age had striped their color away. He smiled down at her, laughing his sweet laugh as she kissed each of his horns, then tugged at his smaller shoulder spikes of deepest violet. She’d only seen his dragon a few times, before his eyes had left him completely, but he’d always been the prettiest one. Sleek and violet-scaled, his eyes a bright amber fire to match his dragonflame. His spikes and frilled spines had been violet, too, but a shade so deep it shined like obsidian until the sunlight hit it.

As humans, her entire family had the same Valyrian features: silver-gold hair, slender builds, and eyes in different shades of violet. Their dragons were far more unique.

“You’ll be the last of us, Dany. One day, when we’ve all left this world, you will be the last dragon. The final glimmer of light before the sun sets.” He touched her newly grown spikes on her shoulder, his sadness a sharp prickle that seemed to trickle from her spike into her chest. “A Targaryen alone in this world is a terrible thing. Share your life far and wide, love deeper than the center of the world. Find someone to share your days with, sweet girl.”

As a girl of only five, Dany hadn’t understood him. Not then. But youth changed her, her dragon skin more. 

She’d never experienced a greater freedom than streaking across the cobalt skies. Banking and diving between the hills of her home, pushing her growing wings to carry her as high as the sun and the moon, to find that fiery star she’d tried to kiss in her dreams. Dany thrived in her scales. If her mother hadn’t made her shift back every evening, she would have stayed that way. 

Every night, however, Rhaella called her home from the great balcony of the Red Tower high on Aegon’s Hill—her mother’s nest. Her mother’s song was full of sorrow, high and delicate, but powerful, too. Every dusk, Dany would follow the music, coasting on the salty, wiggly air currents of the sea that spread south and east of their home. Rhaella would scold her when she landed, a relieved exasperation as Dany’s claws clattered on the old stones of the wide balcony. As she tumbled and shrunk back to her human skin, still spiked and horned, Rhaella checked her over. Dany never went without her horns and spikes, felt too confined when she retracted them fully.

“Must you always get so muddy?”

Dany beamed, taking her words as praise.

“Mud baths are the best, Mama!” 

And it was true. After hours of flying, Dany loved nothing more than to dive into the sparkling sea, then find a damp shoreline where the high tide had left globs of soft, dark brown mud. She’d roll and roll, until her wings and scales and chin were coated, then let the sun bake her dry.

Rhaella kissed her dirty cheek, then forced her into a second bath. A hot watered one, where Dany was scrubbed pink, her silver-gold hair brushed to a bright shine. She liked the warmth, but not so much the scrubbing. Afterwards, they ate together. On the balcony if it was cool and dry, or inside if rain pattered her mother’s hill. Dany always wanted to go back out then, to spread her wings and taste the chill of the night’s air, to see if she could reach the stars. Every night, her mother refused.

“You’ve spent too long with wings today.” Fear sharpened her mother’s words as she cradled Dany close. “You must always change back, my little dragon.  _ Always _ . You’ll lose everything you are if you stay a dragon for too long.”

But Dany longed to be a dragon, true and bold and fierce. She wanted it more than anything in the world. High above, life made sense. From the sky she could see for miles, could conduct her own song, weaving melodies and pitches together in a perfect blend of herself. 

Dreams never found her there.

In the night, as she slept in her soft, fragile human skin, her dreams were like a beacon and a curse. Ever since her fire dream, Dany was visited by her white-furred, mystery boy. She never dreamt of flying anymore, but of sitting or running or playing with him. As a  _ human _ . Vulnerable and soft of flesh, and so very small. Her skin always itched for her scales when she woke, but the ghostly memory of his smile soothed her, too. 

Dany dreamt of him as she grew, whenever she dreamed. He never showed his face, though, not in its entirety. In her dreams, he was only a smile, his white pelt pulled over his head, all the way down to his upper lip. Whoever he was, he was half a phantom in her mind, but simple in his loveliness, too. They’d laugh and play silly chasing games most nights—because it was always night in her dreams with him. Dark, colder, but it never scared them, so long as they were together. 

“We’ve got us both, together,” he would always say. 

Then he would tentatively grasp her hand, and a shot of warm recognition raced through Dany, steady and burning and so very different from her own fire.

Other nights, her dreams seemed determined to scare her, to make up for the exciting dragon adventures of her waking days. She’d find herself on a great, molten island, the sea crashing against the cliffs in the deepest darkness Dany had ever seen. Back at home, the hills were never dark. With four dragons, flames were always in the air, brightening the night like strings of sunlight. But his ash-hot scent was always waiting, her hand slipping into his. They’d sit on the cliffside, pointing out the white-caps of the waves far below, talking their fears away. Somehow, they never seemed to discuss their waking lives. Together, they huddled in the dark, ignored the distant, echoing shrieks of another dragon—an  _ unknown _ dragon. One that was warped and ruined and seeking them.

“He won’t find us here,” Dany told her companion, for he always started in fright at the dragon’s eerie song. “If he does, I’ll keep you safe. That’s what a good dragon does.”

“I’ll keep you safe, too. As Ghost!”

His hand slipped from hers then, and Dany bolted awake in fear every time it did. Sometimes, she would cry as dawn peered in through her windows. Most mornings, after his hand disappeared, she’d frown and wonder what he’d meant. If perhaps his name was Ghost, odd as that seemed, but it was the name she gave him in her dreams. She was always too startled to finish the dream. To find out how a ghost could keep anyone safe from a monstrous dragon. 

In the end, Dany asked her brother about her dreams. Uncle Aemon had never taken a mate, and her own mother had grown up with Dany’s father. She’d never needed to dream of him, not like Dany did with Ghost. Rhaegar, however, was different. He’d taken a mate once, then lost her. His songs were too much like their mother’s for such a reality to not be true.

Rhaegar liked to rest in the bowels of Rhaenys’s Hill, deep in its center where the chambers and halls echoed his every note. Her brother made the most beautiful music, wavering and haunting and full of truth. She joined him one afternoon, resting against his jade hide in her human skin. Dany was eleven then, just embarking on the beginnings of womanhood.

Her little voice filled the halls as she explained her persistent dreams. As she finally told someone of Ghost, her strange boy, half hidden in shadows.

Rhaegar listened without interruption, just a gentle, quiet rumble of his purrs to soothe her uncertainty.

“I think he’s mine,” Dany said. She couldn’t explain it any better than that. Every dream when their hands joined it felt better than coming home.

Her brother shifted slowly to his own human form, shrinking and shrinking until he was a tall, slender man. He was much older than her—had been three and twenty when she was born—but that was not so uncommon for dragons. Mating was difficult for them, a once a year chance that needed precisely the right elements to create a new life. The year afterward was even more brutal. Her mother had explained it once, sad-eyed and burdened.

“If you someday find someone, Dany, and mate, you must remain human. Entirely human, no spikes or horns or wings until after the babe is born near the next summer solstice. That’s why you must be sure you trust that person, fully and completely.”

Mama hadn’t mentioned all of her lost tries, but Uncle Aemon had told Dany of her brothers and sisters that hadn’t survived. Most had been born too early, when Mama had needed to transform to defend herself. Others had bled out of her with the simplest breach of trust between her parents. Dragons were delicate until they were born, more than any other shifter.

Rhaegar considered her then, stroked her silver-gold braids and her growing horns. They were turning now, strips of scarlet bleeding in from the root, like dots of ink soaking into parchment.

“Some dreams are only dreams,” he told her. 

“But Ghost was in my fire dream, too. So that must mean—”

“Fire dreams are just that, Daenerys.  _ Dreams _ . They mark your second birth, your acceptance of the dragon blood in your veins.” He sighed. “I once thought a fire dream could mean everything, too. That it was a flash of my future, a path I needed to walk.”

Melancholy settled on him, heavier than storm clouds. Dany curled into his lap and rubbed his ribbed bronze horns. They’d taken an odd path in their growth. First arching up, then plummeting toward his shoulders. Sometimes, Dany wondered if that was why he was so sad.

“What was your fire dream about?”

“A son I’ll never have. He was beautiful and perfect, and looked so much like his mother. I never saw her in my dreams, but… I found her,” he confessed. Rhaegar swallowed, tears sparkling in his eyes. “Mother tried to convince me not to leave, that it wasn’t safe, but I went north anyway. That’s where I always dreamt he was, and as soon as I saw her, I knew. Dark curly hair, gray eyes, a softer version of his long face.”

He fell silent then, for so long Dany worried his voice might never return. That every afternoon, his dragon song wouldn’t echo across the world from the depths of Rhaenys’s Hill to sing her home. Finally, she pried.

“What happened to her?”

“Father did.”

Rhaegar wouldn’t say any more after that. Nobody ever talked about their father. All Dany knew was that he’d disappeared, long ago, the same summer he and Mama had made her. Beside her, Rhaegar swelled back to his dragon skin, and that night, his song wound through their hills, calling out for everything he’d lost.

Dany didn’t ask him again. She didn’t ask Uncle Aemon or Mama about their own fire dreams either, nor any other dragon dreams they’d had since they were small. Somehow, she didn’t want to know their answers. 

Still she dreamed of Ghost, convinced he must be real. He grew alongside her, roughly her own age and size. Until womanhood found her, like a island in a storm. Her human figure changed abruptly, left Dany clumsy and uncomfortable as her shape curved in odd places, rounding and softening from the firmer muscles of her girlhood. They were still there, of course, but hidden under curved hips and soft breasts. 

She spent more time in dragon skin, much to her mother’s chagrin, but felt safest in her scales, a majestic onyx beast, soaring high above. Like her human form, her dragon changed, too. She didn’t soften, though, but hardened and swelled until she was larger than her brother, and her mother, too. Her scales turned to black iron rimmed with scarlet smiles, her horns grew parallel along the sides of her head, deepening to crimson. She grew and grew, until she could blot out the sun and was as large as the Red Tower’s balcony that covered half the hilltop.

All three of her relatives fretted about her size.

Mama worried if she would fit beneath the hills, if they’d need to dig a larger chamber in the catacombs some day, just for her. That being inside their home would make her feel too confined and turn her sickly.

Rhaegar feared her wanderings, for as she grew Dany flew further and further each day. South, sometimes east, across great seas to see where they ended. His song always drew her back, though. Every afternoon she followed Rhaegar’s melody home.

Uncle Aemon was overjoyed for her, but concerned, too. Not so much of her massive size, but of the toll it took to go from a small young woman to a enormous great dragon. 

“As long as you’re not hurting yourself,” he told her the morning of her sixteenth nameday. “Change can be a marvelous thing, Daenerys. Bettering yourself and your life, welcoming new people into your world, but you must never lose this, dear.”

His shaky, wrinkled hand pressed to her chest, over her heart.

“Uncle Aemon?”

“Don’t forget what’s important. You have a good heart, you always have, and a dragon…” Uncle Aemon touched her face, the bone of her cheek. “Dragons cannot be tamed, Daenerys. It’s part of our nature, and our curse, too. Never forget what you are— _ all _ of what you are. Human and gentle and  _ kind _ , sweet girl.”

She didn’t understand his meaning, not entirely. They ate breakfast together, as they did most mornings, then Dany took to the humid summer skies. An easterly wind warmed the air, lifted her wings high into the plumes of towering clouds. Aromas of spice and heat and soft horse hair brushed her spikes, tempting her onward. She followed them east that day, toward the rising sun and then toward the navy edge as night crept toward the horizon. 

For the first time, when Rhaegar’s dragon song echoed after her, Dany ignored it. Her senses chafed at his voice, resisted being led by another’s commands. Today, she’d flown far enough to find the end of the sea. A new land stretched before her triumphantly, a dark mass that cut off the water. Breaths of fire, molten and hotter than dragonflame, fed into the wind. South of her, and very far off, but like a horrible shadow of home somehow. 

Half a day behind Dany, her mother’s song joined with her brother’s. Then Uncle Aemon’s dwindling voice, too.

Dany shook their calls off, flew through a sheet of rain clouds, northeast, and came out to a great blue moon on the eastern side. Night had fallen hard on this new land, blocking the strange sights from even her dragon eyes. She searched for a safe place to sleep, eventually spotting a rocky hill jutting from a sea of tall grass. A small cave covered the hilltop, shallow and barren. Dany curled up there, remembering her mother’s rule even as she ignored the fading sounds of her song.

Her human skin made her uncomfortable, her silky dress too thin for the chilly night. But a dragon was never without fire, whether inside or out. She purred softly to herself, counting the stars above, delighting in the fragrant new smells. The moist dirt between her toes, and the fresh grass filling the air. When she woke in her dream, her faithful companion was beside her. Not on their usual island cliffside, but with her in the hilltop’s shallow cave. 

He smiled from under his white pelt, shaggy ears perking up. As always, he didn’t seem to notice he wore it. Like it was as much a part of him as her own spikes and horns were. 

“Where’s this then?” he asked.

Dany sat up, scooted over so he might join her. That sat together, side by side, their clasped hands resting on her lap.

“East,” she told him. “I flew farther than ever today. Made it across the sea.”

He nodded, rested his head on her shoulder, his fingers stroking the soft skin between hers. Just as she had grown up, so had he over the years. Gone was the cheerful young boy who taught her to make great, warm nests of pillows and blankets and furs. His voice had deepened quickly over the last year, his stature shooting up until he could press his chin onto the top of her head. She didn’t dream of him every night, but whenever she dreamed, he was always with her. Beside her in sleep and never anywhere else.

Dany tried to get her bearings. In her dreams, it was always difficult to recall her waking curiosities; to drag her pressing questions into this fantastical void just for them.

“Are you real? Out here, somewhere I haven’t been yet?”

She felt his jaw shifted as he frowned.

“I think so.” Helpfully, he pinched himself. “Feels real enough to me.”

“Me, too.”

Dany tilted her head toward his, her cheek resting on his white fur pelt. His scent was sharper, but still dotted with a smoky hot ash and something else… a smell she’d never found a name for in all her years. Not an herb, though she’d had Uncle Aemon teach her every single one he knew just to be sure. A woody smell. Cold somehow, like a thick clot of blood oozing from damp soil.

But he was a dragon, too. Dany had never been so sure as she was of that. Miraculous and full of fire, though he’d never shown it to her. Not yet. Someday, he would. 

She fell asleep beside him as their deep, contented purrs melded into one.

 

* * *

 

Dany continued east. Her Ghost disappeared after that first night, her sleep suddenly void of companionship. A great grass sea stretched across the lands below her, the scent of horse hair pungent against her spikes. She hunted closer scents, tore a great golden eagle from the sky the next morning. Then roasted a small flock of sheep the following day, cracking their charred bones in her jaws. For a week Dany flew on, circling north and south as she steadily traveled east, until she found the horse smell she’d been pursuing, shrieking from the sky as the stampede thundered across the plains below her. At the sight of her bulk blocking out the sun, the horses scattered. 

Horse-shifters. She could sense their human flesh hidden in their hooves. 

Dany followed them, chasing a small group that broke from the herde. When she flew ahead and landed before them, every one of them stopped. Of the dozen, half shifted to their human skins, all women who sunk to the ground before her. She shrank to meet them, disappearing into the tall grass, too short to see above it.

The horse-shifters found her first, led by a great black stallion, his mane braided with tinkling bells. Their alpha. His scent was a thick wall of musk that tried to drop Dany to her knees, too. Instead, she kept her feet. He circled her once as the rest prostrated themselves before her, talking in a language she didn’t understand. After one lap, Dany steeled herself for a fight, let smoke gush from her small nostrils. Instead, the black stallion shifted, too, but unlike the others he didn’t shrink much.

One of the women approached at his command, and spoke first in her own tongue, and then another Dany didn’t know, and finally in a language she understood. She was a robust woman, wide of hip and stiff jawed.

“I am Jhiqui. Khal Drogo asks that you do not harm our  _ khalasar _ , dragon queen.”

“He has my word, no harm will come to you,” Dany told her. “I am simply exploring, as young dragons do.”

They welcomed her, but not without a great deal of distrust and hesitation. Jhiqui stayed beside her as they joined up with the rest of the  _ khalasar _ that had fled east, deeper into the great grass sea. They were one of many, Jhiqui explained. A great  _ khalasar  _ of horses, always at war with others of their kind. Some were in awe of Dany, but most shied away from her brimstone scent, her crimson horns and spikes she’d left sharp and deadly on her human skin. 

Dany traveled the rest of that day with them, then ate beside Jhiqui and Khal Drogo that night. He was a enormous man, taller than her brother by a head, built more like the ox she’d feasted upon three days before. Like his horse mane, his dark hair was oiled and braided with tiny bells that tinkled when he moved. All that night and the next day, Drogo watched her. His dark eyes hung on her hips, her chest, gave her scarlet horns a number of intrigued glances that made her skin crawl.

Dany liked the others well enough. Jhiqui was lovely, a wealth of knowledge for the lands all around them. She told Dany all about the cities to their west and fabled ones to the far east. Human cities where mortals worshipped all matter of strange beings and ideas; of other cities too, where it was rumored that humans owned one another, tried to steal each other’s souls. When Dany asked, Jhiqui couldn’t tell her where that was, only that she hoped to never go there. 

“If humans treat their own kind in such a way, imagine how they would try to harm us.”

She met young Dothraki men, too, for that was their chosen name in their own language. Rakharo with his droopy mustachios. Aggo who ran faster than anyone else, both as a man and a horse. Jhogo who was thinner than her brother, but much better at laughing. Each one was a rare delight, but none of them had the smile she saw in her dreams.

For a fortnight, Dany stayed with the  _ khalasar _ , learning and watching and experiencing their world as they journeyed east to their sacred city. But the constant companionship and chatter was overwhelming, too. As a dragon, flying high above them, it was easier to separate herself, but the longer she stayed human, the harder it became. Her senses grew overwhelmed, her temper fizzling with agitation. By the end of the week, when she landed to join them as the ruby sun set, Dany had to soften her entire body. No horns or spikes, no hard lines of scales curving over her neck or sides. Just fragile human flesh. Skin that didn’t pick up a hundred different sounds and scents from thousands of bodies.

Dany shivered under the pale stars beginning to dot the sky. She hated being without her dragon entirely; loathed the vulnerability and fear that trembled through her.

It was that night, under a waning quarter moon, that Drogo followed her when she headed for a shallow lake nearby to bathe. Beyond the large camp, past the firelight as the Dothraki ate and laughed and mated in the open. His scent was of a lathered horse as he pursued her with his loud, confident footsteps. When Dany reached the lake, and stepped past where the grass gave away to soft mud, she turned to him.

“Leave me in peace, I have no interest in you.”

He spoke none of her language, and she none of his. Dany smoldered the dragonflame always warm in her belly, flooded her scent with anger and warning. Drogo did not move, only stared at her lips, her belly, her hips.

She tried again to get her point across. “I will not mate with you.” 

That time, he seemed to understand, though he did not move from the grass’s edge. Dany turned away, then jerked backward when his hand grabbed her upper arm.

“I said no!”

“No.” He echoed the word, but his hand kept its grip on her. “No?”

“ _ No. _ ”

Half a second later, Dany smacked him across his face, standing on her toes to reach. He let go then, took a step away. She did the same, let her feet dip into the water. Then he reached for her again, for her hip this time, his lust like a tornadic spiral in the air. Her fury only seemed to embolden him more, like she was a wild horse he longed to break.

Drogo tried to turn her, to rip her dirty, frayed dress along her hip. Her insides swelled with fire, arms cracking and melting into her great, dark wings. She shrieked in warning, and in pain, as she horns and spikes tore through her skin, raw and oversensitive from so much human exposure. She grew and grew, swelling in her fury, until she was a great black beast, a dark shadow overtaking him.

When Drogo tried to mount her, Dany roasted him alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that until next week!
> 
> For anyone also reading Embers, I should have that update out late tonight or sometime Wednesday. Currently, the chapter's about two-thirds done, so hopefully I can get it finished and up before AO3's site update, haha.
> 
> Cheers!


	5. Fire and Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone!
> 
> Sooo, this chapter is the brief Dany/Daario tagged for this fic. It's like... half the chapter or so. Just so you're prepared. Like Jon/Ygritte, its not overly graphic or detailed smut. We're saving that for when Jon and Dany finally meet :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Dany fled toward the moon.

Behind her, men and horses screamed. A great swathe of grass was ablaze, its crackling like thunder shaking the earth. Smoke clogged the night sky, hiding the stars from view. She flew in a rage, so fast and far even her strong wings could not bare her pace. Fury she’d never known surged through her, a great rushing in her ears that flushed her vision in a hazy gray. It was dawn when she landed, half-tumbling from the sky in exhaustion. Before her the world was gritty, cold sand, but soon it grew warm under the soles of Dany’s bare feet as the sun climbed into the sky. Steam rose from her flesh, horns, and spikes, seething with her temper.

She searched for some sort of shelter where she might sleep, but found only a barren, dusty landscape. Everything was brown or tan or yellow. Her skin felt like ants were crawling all over her, tiny legs scratching. Eventually, she found a small shelf of rock, jutting parallel to the sandy ground. Dany curled up beneath it, hiding from the sun for the first time in her life.

She tried to sleep, but instead only cried. From fear and rage and the molten churning heat still throbbing triumphantly inside her. 

Drogo had been wrong. To touch her, to assume, to  _ dare _ to try to climb onto her scaly wing and seat himself upon her back. To want anything at all from her,  _ ever _ .

“He deserved it,” Dany whispered to herself. But her spikes shivered as she recalled his screams, death-stenched and terrified; the fear that had spread throughout the  _ khalasar  _ with her flames. A rush of savage joy filled her, too. Primal, deep, an unsatisfied desire she’d never experienced before. She’d like that, enjoyed setting her fire free, tasting even just the scent of another shifter’s flesh roasting. Her jaw ached to chew, to rip at the hot, sizzling sinew and muscle—to taste his flesh.

_ What did I do? What is wrong with me? _

Dany didn’t sleep. Nothing could convince her to close her eyes, not even the thought that she might see her Ghost in her dreams on their dark, cold island. That she might bask in his comforting presence, and tell him what had happened, only to wake alone in an unfamiliar desert.

As the sun drifted toward the horizon, Dany left the cool shade she’d found to explore. She’d flown south, and slightly west. A great bay was near her, salty and hot, but stewing with dirty excrement, too. Dany headed toward it, hoping to come across a city, a place where she might find temporary salvation before her long flight home. She walked into the night, until her feet bled and her human body trembled. But even then, aching with hunger, Dany didn’t dare shift to her dragon again.

For the first time, her dragon frightened her.

As the moon rose, a great crescent smile in the sky, she found the bay and with it, a great yellow city, smoky with ruin. For a moment, she feared she was responsible, that in her rage she’d lost her senses entirely and burned a city. But men had done this. She could feel them in the air, their oily sweat, the hot blood pumping through their bodies.

Pyramids dominated the dark horizon, stepped and blooming with tufts of weak flame. She found the streets quiet, and built of the same yellow bricks that the crumbling walls and towers were. Once inside, she didn’t know where to go. Every door was shut, the windows at street-level shuttered or dark. Nobody was afoot, not even a stray dog or horse. All around her, Dany could sense the memories of human flesh, the stark absence of life except for a few gathered spots around the massive pyramids. Their flesh was soft, but built of firm muscle, too. It made her mouth water and her stomach churn somewhere between hunger and queasiness.

It was near dawn when she finally came across someone. A man, strolling from one of the smaller pyramids. He smelled of sated lust and several women. His hair was a strange blue, his beard split into three prongs like a trident. At each hip was a man-made weapon, the hilts depicting naked women, eyes jewel bright. Dany flushed at the lewd sight.

The man had noticed her, too, wandering the streets along in the dark. When Dany met his eyes, she was surprised by how bright their blue was. Relief welled up in her when he spoke a language she understood.

“Beautiful queen, it is not safe to be out so late in this ravaged city,” he said. His voice was smooth, just as his movements. He eyed her horns and spikes with curiosity. “Come, which pyramid is yours?”

“None.” 

A glitter of gold lit his smile, and while it was not the smile in Dany’s dreams, it was friendly.

“An odd name for a pyramid.” He offered her his arm and, tentatively, Dany took it. “Just point the way, sweet one. I’ll make sure you get there safe.”

But she had no place, not even a name for this strange, yellow city. Her first true city that she had walked through and touched. He told her his name was Daario Naharis, a sellsword captain for the Stormcrows, and that the city was called Yunkai. His company of men had recently sacked it, left the city barren of its people and half a smoldering ruin. Just the short, bloody tale made the fire swarm in Dany’s gut. Her dragon skin longed for his words, for the blood dotting the sandy squares and streets, for a mound of rotting corpses she could smell, but not see. She did her best not to scream until the hunger clawing at her throat stopped.

Dany offered her own name in return, but not the familial shortening.

“I’m Daenerys. I flew across the sea to come here.” 

“Flew?” Daario chuckled, a bit confused, but still welcoming. “From where?”

And slowly, as they walked about the dead city, Dany told him. Not everything of her life, but pieces of her journey to Yunkai. He’d heard of shapeshifters, though had only met a few in his life. Dragons were a far different matter. Legends, Daario told her, but absent from the world now. 

Like the majority of the nearby by cities, Daario was fully human, a mortal. They talked and laughed as the sun rose and the sparse city came to life around them. Aromas of spice and hot bakes flooded Dany’s senses. Her belly rumbled as loud as a roar. Daario only laughed, squeezed her hand, then bought her what smelled and looked best from the only square full of people—of men. Afterward, sleepy and full of warm food, Daario offered her a bed in the pyramid his company had taken.

“A bed? And nothing else?”

“Only what you desire, sweet queen. To sleep or fuck or delight in conversation. I offer only what you wish, but...” He grinned at her, teasing but kind. “I’ve had a hundred women, and would love you better than all hundred combined.”

“I wish only for sleep, not your body nor your boasts.”

“Then you will have that.”

Even then, Dany didn’t trust him fully, but she was exhausted. She accepted his offer, and slept fitfully, half her senses alert for his lust to take control of him. He kept to himself, though, left her for the rest of the morning at the top of the pyramid. When she woke in the late afternoon, Daario was seated on the open balcony, brushing blue dye into his beard. His golden tooth winked at her in the sunlight.

“You slept well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

That night, after another delicious meal, Dany felt ready to stretch her wings again, to test how her dragon skin boiled after the day before. She left the city, Daario an escort at her side. Savage people of the hills raided on the city’s outskirts, he said, though Dany had yet to see or smell anyone else. In the dusty plains, under a violet night sky, Dany transformed, slipped into her dragon skin with a practiced ease. Relief swamped her, along with a heady rush to rise with the moon. As Dany flew, Daario sat on the sands below to watch. When the moon was high, and Dany’s scales were steaming with dew, she returned to him. 

“You are a magnificent being, dragon queen.” Daario kissed her knuckles, a huge smile on his handsome face. “Will you not stay here, just a while longer?”

She stared toward the western horizon, felt more than heard her family’s mournful song. But echoes of Drogo’s screams were louder. Rhaegar’s face looked down at her, disappointed. Her mother’s beautiful features turned angry. Shock lined the wrinkles of Uncle Aemon’s countenance, horrified at what she’d done.

“A bit longer,” Dany agreed, and together, they returned to Yunkai’s yellow pyramids. Inside the city walls, the night was bright with torches and men’s laughter. She tried not to notice the sudden absence of the dead bodies’ stench.

 

* * *

 

Dany stayed in Yunkai. She explored the city’s empty buildings, read scattered pages from tore books and scrolls, met the men of the Second Sons and Stormcrows. After the men had seen the enormous size of her dragon, saw her morning flights high above, Dany was given a pyramid of her own. 

Every man was in awe of her scales and spikes, the great bulk of her torso, and the searing heat of her dragonflame. Each morning, Dany flew high above the city and the bay nearby, let the men call and cheer at the impressive sight she made. Very quickly, she stopped shifting from her dragon skin at all. She ate and dreamt the last of summer away, and then the autumn, too. In Yunkai’s dusty, hot land, the mark of the seasons changing was only made by the shifting stars across the night sky. The air stayed warm. The heat never fled.  

Her mother’s firmest lesson grew as distant as her home. Yet, as a dragon, Dany dreamed of those warnings, the rule that had become habit.

_ You must always change back, Daenerys, least you lose yourself. _

But she always refused the call, too ashamed to face her mother.

A dragon had never been so worshipped, with the world hot and a great stone pyramid as her nest and men to offer her feasts morning and night. Dany languished in her dragon scales, did not change from them for almost a month. Her normal interests grew dull like old parchment. She roasted the books and scrolls like dry kindling, delighting in their flaky burning, ate and slept, then ate some more. Her once vivid dreams of Ghost faded to burning flesh. To the hot taste of roasted horse flooding her mouth, the urge to follow the tang of another shifter’s blood or even a simple mortal man. To  _ hunt _ .

Only Daario’s visits peaked her excitement. None of the other men would go near her after Dany settled fully into her dragon skin. But Daario came to see her, once a day, and then every morning and from dusk until deepest night. On the cusp of winter, Daario came to her great, brimstone nest, a slaughtered ox wheeled in on a cart behind him. 

Dany gorged on it, roasting the flesh to perfection, snarling and snapping as she crunched through sinew and skin and bone.

“Sweet queen, won’t you come outside with me?” His hand brushed her wing claw, tentative, but Dany crooned at the contact. Her thunderous purr shook the entire pyramid. “On two legs, perhaps. It’s been so long since you’ve shown your sweetest face.”

She took some convincing, but in the end, Dany took to the skies, wobbling a little as she’d been nested underground for months. Her wings ached at the movements. They met south of Yunkai on the dusty shore, so far away that the stepped pyramids looked small enough to fit in her hand. 

Her _ human _ hand. 

The thought felt strange, more so when she stared at the bones of her wings, the sharp wing claw. Had they ever truly been such a vulnerable skin, one so delicately perfect for the careful searing of flames? Had her magnificent size once fit into such a small girl?

Even her family’s faces were faded, as if she’d drawn them on a sandy beach and the tide had come to claim them. They’d looked as she did, hadn’t they? But how did she look again? Rhaegar had not been scarlet and black, not like she was. Neither had her mother nor Uncle Aemon. Yet, somehow, she was certain they’d all looked so very much alike.

Slowly, Dany lowered herself to the sand beside Daario, his hand brushing her snout. A spark of delight came with it, a hot longing and desire to feel his touch closer. On her skin, not her scales. To seek pleasure different from her month of sated hunger and comfort in her pyramid. 

“Will you not show me your beautiful face anymore?”

Dany took flight, darting high into the sky, twisting and soaring, breathing in the rush of air and ecstasy of her dragon form. Her  _ better _ form. She might have flown for hours if not for Daario on the ground. And he was patient, waiting and watching, his hand shading his bright blue eyes. As a dragon, even a mile above, Dany could scent his arousal, a soft, inviting lust thrice as heady with her spikes brushing at the scents in the air. All these weeks she’d been only a dragon, and still he desired her, despite what he’d seen her capable of doing. She belched a plume of scarlet and black flame, and then…

Dany sang.

Not quite the same song she’d created as a girl to be shared with her future mate, nor her revisions as a young woman. So far from home, it was difficult to recall how that song had felt in her throat, or the joy it left in her heart. But she tried to reach for it, hoped Daario’s dulled human senses could understand her affections. As she sang, Dany flew lower, tried to dance upon the sky, but found the movements too jarring for her melody.

Not her mating song, but something like it. Enough for a lover, if nothing more.

Agony split her bones as Dany shifted. Too long away had left the transformation stiff and sharp with cracking joints, made her skin feel as though it were ripping instead of shrinking back to soft human arms. She let out a gasp once it was over, a burst of hot flame pooling in her mouth, soaking the air. Before her, Daario gazed at her in awe and delight.

“Don’t be afraid,” Dany told him. But his eyes were flirty, his voice like a gem. Her belly pulsed, low and needy. 

“Of you, sweet queen? Never.”

Over the past few months, he’d proven himself dangerous, but a man of many women. Every time he came to see her, Dany could smell the faded passion on him, and sometimes bloodlust, too. Every now and then, death marked his skin, from a raid out on the hot sands. To protect the city, he assured her. But somehow, the death never smelt quite how he described the battle. Despite it all, Dany loved the way the sun sparkled in his eyes, reflected off his golden tooth. They both lit up like flames, hot and prepared to remake the world.

Daario approached, settled on his knees.

“My blood, my body, my songs, are yours. Will you not take my love, sweet queen?”

Dany tested the air with her spikes, tasted the husky need of him, the submission, too. Her horns were heavier than they’d been before, near full-grown now.

“Would that make me another woman on your list?” Dany asked. “You’ve boasted you’ve had so many before.”

“A thousand,” he told her, “but never a dragon, sweet queen. I will be only yours, if you will be mine.”

Dany clasped his hands and drew him to his feet. She shivered in excitement, at the surge of heat between her thighs. He would never be a true mate, but she had no need for a family. Nor the one she could not truly remember. For a first lover, Daario would be a thrill. 

“What are you waiting for, Captain? I am yours.”

Dany accepted his kiss as his arms circled around her.

 

* * *

 

Until that afternoon, Dany had never understood the sheer joy of her human skin. They mated there, amongst the dusty sand beside the sparkling bay, resting on top of their clothes. Bliss crashed over her as they joined, at the way her spikes quivered with every touch and kiss. He took her twice in the open, and back in Yunkai, they did the same until morning at the top of her pyramid. Every morning and afternoon, they made love, for Daario insisted it was too passionate to be fucking.

“Will you love me always, beautiful queen? As only a dragon can?”

And at first, Dany assured him that she would. Delight overwhelmed her in those first few weeks. After a month of love making and sleepy, quiet talks in the afterglow, however, Daario’s priorities began to change. They shared a bed still, but each afternoon he asked to see her dragon form. To join her on the plains, or even in the air.

The first time he suggested such a thing, Dany’s entire body went rigged.

“No.” She jolted upward in their silky bedding, the haze of pleasure evaporating around her. A panic she didn’t understand tightened in her lungs. “A dragon is not a slave.”

And Daario…

For once, he didn’t understand. Her words made him angry, left a blistering rift between them. He left her then, to go gambling or drinking with his fellow sellswords, and did not return for near three days. When he did, the stench of blood and a frightened death clung to him. Dany’s stomach boiled at the smell of it, the suddenly uncomfortable gnawing at her insides. Whatever he had done, though, Daario was regretful to her.

“Forgive me, sweet queen, I only wished to love all of you, not tame you.” He kissed her cheek, then her neck as she melted into him. “A great dragon is this wondrous woman before me. Fire and blood and sweet, hungry flesh.”

But something in his words rang false, even as Dany welcomed him into her arms and held him down as they fucked. For it was fucking that time, she was certain of that, despite her inexperience. He smelled of blood and a reckless fire, and Dany’s spikes soaked it in with his greed, his fingertips brushing her scales and horns. Hunger bubbled in her belly, deep and fearsome, longing for the rusted tang of fresh blood.

She had not hunted as a dragon in ages.

 

* * *

 

For a while, Daario became her attentive lover again, though he spent just as much time amongst his men. Dany grew content inside her warm pyramid. As a soft-fleshed woman while enjoying Daario, and more often as a slumbering dragon gorging beneath her pyramid when he was not present. 

But with deep winter, overcast skies covered Yunkai. Sunlight abandoned them and a cooler breeze blew in from the north. Agitation prickled at Dany, from the odd shift in weather and the strange scents that spread across the city at all hours of the day and night. Of death and blood and sorrow. One afternoon, Daario arrived in a rush.He didn’t carry her to bed as he once would have.

“Let us fly today,” he said, stroking her cheek. “The men would love to see your magic.”

Her spikes prickled with interest, to brush the clouds and break through them to the sun hidden above. Dany needed no convincing then. She shifted upon the balcony, the edges crumbling under her feet as she launched herself into the air. Cool wind slipped over her scales, wove between her spikes and spines, down to the whipping of her tail. 

Once she saw Daario mount his horse, she followed him across the sands, the sounds of men and shouts growing louder. And  _ blood _ . Blood was like an ocean upon the air. Her nostrils flared, pulling it all in. She flew harder, faster toward the source, and crested a small range on hills onto a great battle. 

A  _ slaughter _ .

Dany shrieked in alarm at the sights and sounds, the splashes of blood and the entrails littering the ground. And she recognized some of them, men from Daario’s company, but other unfamiliar faces, too. Some were not more than boys, smooth-jawed and thin. Others were old and feeble, cowering beside loved ones. Little children screamed. Mothers wept and pleaded. Daario’s tales of savage raiders splintered inside her.

The Stormcrows cheered at the sight of Dany, weapons raised and waving in elation toward her. Daario galloped into sight, his own blade lifted into the air.

“Give them fire, my queen! Burn them all!”

_ Burn them all. Burn them all burn them all burnthemall! _

His words sent Dany into a great spiral, yanking at some hidden secret she could not remember. She roared as she tumbled toward the ground, fighting the wind and the fear and herself most of all. Taming the great dragon she suddenly found herself lock inside. A dragon desperate to turn the ground to ash, to devour all the moving life on the blood soaked field before her.

Dany caught herself a dozen feet from the earth. She slammed into the dirt, the ground trembling underfoot. When Daario raced toward her wing, bellowing once more for flames, Dany screamed. Her wrath knocked the men over. The horses tottered onto their sides. The ones who managed to regain their footing bolted in fear. Others simply lay on the ground, thrashing and kicking in terror.

Daario pulled up beside her, aimed his blade toward the bloodiest part of the battlefield. Most were the unknown people, families huddled in terror, but some were his own.

“Burn them!” he shouted. “Make the world remember this day. Show them what a dragon is.”

_ I am not yours to command _ .

Dany snarled at him, then whipped her tail around. Both Daario and his horse landed fifty feet away, unmoving on the ground. Around her, the rest of the Stormcrows were shouting. Chains clinked as they were hooked to great arrows on wagons. When the first was shot into the air, it soared over Dany’s back and gouged deep into the dirt on the opposite side. A second did the same, then a third over her neck.

Her muscles contracted, rage building on her panic. A spear sliced her left wing, and she roared again, so long and loud, the men all crumbled to the ground, holding their ears. Dany ripped up the chains, trampled them into the dirt, then melted each with her fire.

Around her, men screamed. Some ran, others curled up on the ground, pissing themselves and crying. Every Stormcrow felt her flames, crumbled to ash upon the sand. Around her, the families fled, rushing for the hills in the distance.

When she turned, Daario was on his feet once more, his right arm twisted at a funny angle.

“You promised to be  _ mine _ ! Mine to command,  _ my  _ dragon!”

Dany set him ablaze, too.

 

* * *

 

She flew for days. First in one direction, and then another. Aimless, lost, too terrified of people and too horrified at her own actions to shift from her warm dragon skin. Somehow, Dany found herself back on the great grass sea. She was further west than her last visit, but uncertain of how to go forward, to go home. Yet she dreaded returning, could not recall how to find the salt sea, nor what her home had looked like. 

Mountains, she thought. Three great mountains, but that seemed too large. Too cold.

A shallow cave alone in the grass sea didn’t seem right either.

Only a molten island cliffside calmed her, the scent of a smoky, pale boy.

Dany found a stretch of dead grass to curl up on as the stars filled the sky. She tried to purr, but only managed a few weak rumbles that were the furthest from comforting. The last one sent a jolt through her, made her lungs spasm until she withered to her frail human form. Crying, Dany wrapped herself in the tatters of her once fine silk dress, and tried to rock herself to sleep.

Like her mother once had. And Rhaegar, too. He’d been beside them, singing his beautiful melodies that could make souls soar. His eyes only ever lit up when he sang, a deep violet closer to indigo and—

A great violet dragon filled Dany’s thoughts. Lilac-horned with eyes of golden amber, not molten like fire, but sweet like honey.

_ Uncle Aemon _ .

Dany gasped as his peaceful, wrinkled face, appeared in her mind. Her only uncle, her favorite bearer of knowledge, a father to her in all the ways that could ever matter. And her mother, a majestic scarlet dragon, scales swirled with golden curls and bright gold horns to match; her eyes like crystal—a rainbow when the sunlight hit them, but always kind.

_ Mama, where are you? _

She couldn’t remember the way home. Only their weary faces, their worry, the ache of their voices spreading out as far as their dragonsong could carry. Dany sniffled, shut her eyes tight, tried to sing a song— _ any _ song—but she couldn’t remember their melodies. They’d faded with distance, were gone entirely after such a short time in her dragon scales. 

As a waning moon rose into the sky, Dany sang, soft and whimpery, too quiet for anyone to hear. She tried to recall Rhaegar then, to picture him in dragon form, to listen for the wondrous call of his voice. He’d been good, she was certain of that. The best singer in their family. Dany shut her eyes, and fell asleep.

In her dream, the world was colder, like a sheet of ice had covered the earth. She was somewhere she didn’t recognize, mountains to the west, a scattering of lakes to the east. Before her a great castle was on the horizon, the battlements blanketed in fresh white powder. It took her a moment to understand what it was.

_ Snow. I’m standing in snow. _

Cold flakes of it drifted down from the charcoal sky. Her feet were buried to the ankle, but underneath the ground was warm against her toes. She glanced around at the strange sights, and then in puzzlement. A great white tree stood in the grove beside the castle, its leaves a ruby red that made a dome over the rest of the forest. It’s scent was familiar, woody. A thousand clots of sticky blood oozed through its branches and trunk, deep down into the soil, protecting.

_ Ghost. _

Dany turned around, looking and searching, trying to smell the hot ash of his pelt; to spot his shaggy fur amongst the white landscape, and then a howl rent the air.

High above, a dragon answered. He dove into sight, a mass of jade and bronze breaking through the snowy clouds. Days long past hit Dany like a crushing tide. Curled up on warm jade scales, petting her brother’s ribbed horns, resting on his belly as he purred and sang for anyone listening.

_ Rhaegar, help me _ .

And he did. His song seemed to lift the clouds and darkness, divine melodies and unwavering crescendos calling her home. He twirled and swooped through the sky, seemed not to notice her staring up at him, tears running down her face.

“I always thought he was calling to me.”

Dany turned. Hot, smoky ash filled her nostrils. Ghost stood behind her, his white pelt tight around him, his face covered. His head was tilted skyward as Rhaegar danced overhead. Dany listened to her brother, too, for a moment longer. Then she rushed to Ghost, throwing her arms around him. He grunted as they collided, toppling backwards, and then—

Dany bolted awake. 

A rosy dawn filtered through the tall grass. She sat up, shivering in the cold remnants of the fading night. Then she listened. Silence was everywhere, human voices so far in the distance to the south and northwest they were less than murmurs. But she remembered every note of brother’s song, as he sang high above where Ghost had been.

Their song, calling her home.

She took a deep breath, filled her lungs with fire, and shifted to her dragon skin, echoing Rhaegar’s song. Music swelled around her, loving and warm, a reminder of laughter and hugs, of evenings in Uncle Aemon’s libraries, of learning to sing in Rhaegar’s halls, of the gentle, everlasting love in her mother’s eyes. Her voice rose with the sun, shook the pebbles on the dirt beneath her feet. 

Dany sang until her throat went dry, her voice hoarse and strangled from the fire in her song. She choked, hacking and puffing smoke from between her great fangs. 

But another’s song filled her silence. Not just one, but three, returning her call.

_ Mama. Rhaegar. Uncle Aemon. _

In the distance, Dany swore she heard a wolf howl like it was trying to answer, too.

Dany lifted off into the morning sky, set the sun at her back, and followed her family’s song home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is where I'll leave you until next Tuesday.
> 
> As a side note, I may have a little one shot (unrelated to my current Jonerys fics, but overtly loving on Jon Snow's ass) posted later today or tomorrow. It's just a goofy little idea I had. If you follow me on Tumblr, you probably saw me post about it like a week ago :D
> 
> Embers will (hopefully) be up this weekend. My laptop screen died last night, so all my writing is currently being done on an iPad, which is... not the greatest idea 'cause on-screen keyboards. I've go a new screen set to arrive sometime Wednesday, so if all goes well with me prying my laptop open and popping the new one in, then Embers should be up this weekend! If not, I'll probably be getting creative with hooking my laptop to my TV so I can still use it, haha.
> 
> Cheers!


	6. The Last Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Tuesday, another chapter!
> 
> This is the shortest of the chapters I've written so far, but next week's should be longer unless I split it differently during the editing process.
> 
> Enjoy, dears, and thank you for reading! :D

Her return journey took far longer than the first. Dany’s dragon body had grown soft and plump during her months in Yunkai. Every muscle quivered as she flew, then ached with stiff soreness the next morning. But Dany continued on, her body slimming and hardening, from flight and scarce food. She sang every night, and rose with the sun each morning, calling to her brother and mother and uncle. One of them always answered, guiding her back toward the sea.

Crossing the great frothing sea was the hardest part of going back. Dany’s dragon wings were stronger by then, but not as strong as they’d been with her first journey. The weather was fearsome and chilled, huge gusts of wind whipping her about on the open sea. She made it most of the way in one day, bobbing on the rolling, salty sea at dusk as the water’s color bled into the sky. Sleep did not come easy, but with morning’s first light, her mother’s voice echoed over the waves’ rolling crescendo, so close Dany almost cried.

She struggled into the air one last time.

The hills greeted her at midday, three great domes of parched winter grass, trails of smoke drifting from their little towers and windows. Overjoyed screeches echoed from each hill.

_Aegon for mother’s kindness and collections of wood carving. Rhaenys for her brother’s music. Visenya’s for Uncle Aemon’s wealth of knowledge._

Dany was home.

She clattered onto the Red Tower’s balcony, a lumbering mass of scales, her tail cracking the balustrade. Her mother rushed from inside, so unknown and yet so familiar, too.

“Dany? Oh, _Dany_ , my sweet girl!”

Rhaella dropped to her knees, crying and hugging Dany’s heaving snout. At her mother’s touch, Dany shivered, shrunk right back to her small human form, a weeping, shivering woman. She clung to Rhaella’s warmth and cried.

Overhead, her brother shrieked in joy, then joined them. He shifted as he landed, graceful and long-limbed as ever, rushing to embrace her. They both kissed her all over; her cheeks, her nose, her horns. When Dany could cry no more, Rhaella helped her inside, while Rhaegar went to fetch Uncle Aemon.

Her mother bundled Dany up in four furry blankets, made a strong, calming tea, and sat with her by the fire.

“We thought we’d lost you,” Rhaella said, her voice full of a haunting misery. “When you didn’t come back, at first, I thought perhaps you’d found a mate for the solstice. That I might actually get to be a grandmother, but then summer came and went and… it was worse than when your father left.”

“I forgot, Mama.” Dany sniffled and watched the fire. “I forgot our song, and the way home and I didn’t remember what you always warned me about. I stayed a dragon for too long and… Mama, I did terrible things, I think. But those men _deserved_ it... didn’t they?”

“Shh, you’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

As her mother gathered her up in her arms, Dany shut her eyes and heard their screams. Every one of them. Drogo. The Dothraki people caught in the wildfire she’d unintentionally started. The Stormcrows, and Daario most of all. He’d used her, though. Had lied about his intentions and desires, had tried to turn her entirely into a monster for his massacres—a slave to death.

Her tea was cold by the time Rhaegar landed on the balcony, Uncle Aemon clutched tightly in one of his back claws. Rhaella helped him inside, blind and wobbling on his weak old legs. He looked thinner than Dany remembered, and it took her a moment to realize why.

“You shifted,” she said to him, blurting out the words in her shame. “I heard you singing, too. And… gods, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for—”

“Sweet girl, I love you too dearly to not do anything for you.”

Uncle Aemon hobbled toward the sound of her voice, but his hug was stronger than her mother’s or her brother’s. His touched every one of her spikes, examined her piercing horns with shaking fingers. Every touch filled Dany with an unwavering offer of love. Then he kissed her forehead and smiled.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Aemon.”

He was too weak to shift regularly anymore, and too blind to fly, but as Dany truly looked him over, she found her first glance not entirely accurate. It was true that Uncle Aemon was thinner, but his cheeks were a healthy peach color, not the weary paleness that marked a man shut inside. His horns, too, were not entirely bone white anymore. A hazy lilac wrapped around their bases and his scent saturated the air: lilacs, roses, and wildflowers, petals spread wide under the soothing heat of a summer sun.

“Come, let us sit. We have a great deal to talk about, I think.”

Dany nodded.

Together, they all settled into her mother’s high ceilinged hall at the top of the Red Tower. It was Dany’s favorite room in the halls and catacombs of Aegon’s Hill. High, airy, filled with warm sunlight during the day and like sitting inside a globe of stars at night. Every wall glinted with clear windows, thin and tall. Only the dome above them was firm, worn stone, decorated with a chipped painting of three great dragons: their ancestors in their dragon forms.

“How was your first adventure away?”

Uncle Aemon seemed rather amused by his words, like he’d expected her to disappear into the vast world at some point. Perhaps he had. Of the four of them, Uncle Aemon was by far the oldest. Not only was he Dany’s uncle, but an uncle to her mother as well. In truth, he was Dany’s great-great uncle, brother of her great-grandfather, the last Aegon of their family.

“It was awful.”

“Oh?”

His gentle hand rubbed the spike at the base of her neck, and Dany relaxed. She told them everything then, of the aromas of the world calling her forth. Of the Dothraki and Drogo, the flight to Yunkai, and growing lazy and content in her scales hidden away in her pyramid. Most of all, she spoke of Daario, her misjudgment and his conditional loyalty. She grew quiet when her story turned to her dragonflames: of the men she’d reduced to ash on the wind.

“It’s all right,” Rhaegar said. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her forehead. “Nobody has the right to touch you, Dany. Not without your permission, and this _Daario_ … not all humans are so terrible, but most have tried to use our kind for their own advantages. To enslave or tame us. Our own ancestors that lived in the east, they…”

He grew quiet then, and both her mother and uncle tensed. A subtle shifting in the air Dany could feel, but not see. She glanced at each of their faces, tried to recall all the many stories and lessons she’d grown up with about their family. Dragon-shifters had fled from the east, arrived here and settled. Over the years, they’d had times of success and times of strife, even full on war between each other. Some dragons had adjusted well to their two souls. Others sunk into a natural cruelty and disdain for the world, reeking havoc and destruction until another dragon brought their end. Whenever their numbers had grown too large, problems had always followed. Packs were for wolves and bears, not for their kind.

Summerhall had been the last tragedy of their family, a great fire engulfing the castle when a disagreement had broken out. Dragon-shifters could withstand normal fires, and their own flames, too. Another dragon’s fire, however, could harm them as much as anyone else. That old castle was a ruin now, melted, twisted stone farther south that Dany had ever cared to visit. Rhaegar had been born there, that very same, destructive day.

Dany had a vast collection of stories from her family’s time since their migration, but nothing of Targaryens from before their westward journey.

“Were we… bad?”

Uncle Aemon hummed in consideration. “A philosophical question, and perhaps we were. Not all of our blood were great, just as not all were strong or swift. Some have done terrible things, my dear, and…” He turned his blind eyes toward Rhaegar and Rhaella. “It’s time you know.”

Writhing uncertainty filled Dany. A voice whispered Daario’s words in her ear, but wild and raspy and chilling. _Burn them all_ , it insisted as it brushed at her spikes like a faint breeze. Dany shivered. Her mother grabbed another blanket and bundled Dany up tighter.

“Before we came to these hills, we lived in Valyria, across the sea. As mortals.”

“ _What?_ ”

Rhaella’s words shocked Dany more than if a whale had suddenly flown into the room. They were dragon-shifters with magic in their veins and fire in their hearts. To have been mortal, simple humans, felt impossible. _Wrong_.

“We were, love. So many generations ago it’s hard to even count. And when we were… we ruled Valyria, as kings and queens, wielding volcanic fire and meddling with ancient magic from times long fled. But even as humans, our family was different. Descended from the Dawn Empire, and quite arrogant because of it. We spread our rule far and wide, conquered cities and enslaved much of the lands you just flew over. Fire and blood, those were our words, but we always longed for more. Contentment was never our family’s nature.”

“But… we’re dragons, shapeshifters. If we were human, then how—”

Uncle Aemon squeezed Dany’s hand. “Dragons once existed on their own. Just as bears and lions and wolves and horses still do now. We learned to bond with them as dragonriders. Long before our ancestors fled to Valyria from farther east. Eventually, that bond grew, generation by generation, and Daenys the Dreamer foresaw the doom that fell over Valyria. She convinced her family to flee west to safety. That entire peninsula went up in fire, an empire that sunk into a smoking sea of ruin.”

Rhaella nodded. “Daenys led the way, across the sea on their dragons. She was the first shifter. Walked into her dragon’s flames, became fire made flesh. Just as we are now.”

“But if she was human— _mortal_ —shouldn’t the flames have turned her to ash?”

It was Rhaegar who answered, his voice soft and morose. “Blood magic, Dany. The ritual’s been lost since then, along with dragons existing on their own, but she must have used some sort of blood magic. A sacrifice, we think. Magic like that is dark. Equal parts horrifying and greedy. Every magical act has a price, little sister.”

A hollowness filled Dany, understanding welling up inside her like a pot bubbling over. Grief slipped around Dany like a cocoon as she thought of Daenys’s dragon, whoever that majestic beast had been. Bonding and trusting her human counterpart, and then one day, after years and years of mutual companionship, having that same person betray her.

For a brief second, Dany saw a woman, silver-haired and violet-eyed like herself, but drenched in fresh blood—her own and her dragon’s—walking toward her great scaled bulk. But her flames could not stop her. Her wings were constrained. The woman stepped right through the fire, a glittering sword aflame in her hand. With one slice, Dany felt her throat open, her shriek of anguish and rage gurgling into a last wheezing breath as someone crawled _inside_ her...

“She sacrificed her dragon,” Dany said, shuddering but certain. “And in her last breaths the dragon cursed her for it, for _stealing_ her life and scales. Dragons were not meant to be enslaved, and our blood did worse than that. That’s why I began to forget everything. You three, and our song, and myself. Why you’ve always warned me that my human skin was just as important as my scales. Our conflict is not just dueling natures, but a curse on our blood, isn’t it?”

“Dany, how could you—we don’t actually know if—”

But Uncle Aemon quieted Rhaegar’s surprise with a gentle hand on his ribbed bronze horns. His eyes were as pale and sightless as ever, but when Dany met them, she knew he understood what she said was correct. Of the four of them, Dany had always been the one most plagued by strange dreams. Nobody had ever called them prophetic, but that history was in their blood, too.

“We may never know with any certainty,” Uncle Aemon said, “but I have long suspected she did just that.”

For a time, they were all quiet, sipping their tea and watching the weak fire flicker in the grate across the hall. Finally, Rhaella broke the silence.

“Your father lost himself to his dragon.”

Dany swallowed. “Is he still out there, somewhere?”

Nobody had an answer for that. Somehow, that frightened Dany more than a simple yes or no.

“Aerys always struggled to balance himself,” Uncle Aemon said. “Even as a boy, he drifted toward wildness. He grew cruel in his final years here, thoughtless.”

“And you still mated with him?” Dany turned to her mother in disbelief. “Did he hurt you?”

“We both hurt each other, a great deal over the years.” Rhaella sniffed, refused to meet any of their eyes. “Our father insisted we become a mated pair. To continue our line, so that the dragons did not die. We were barely your age, Dany. Young, carefree, and back then, your father was kinder. Fierce and powerful in his dragon skin. For a time, we were happy. But after Summerhall, things changed. We fought more and more. Tried to mate on many a solstice, but dragon babes are so fragile when they’re still growing in your belly. Trust is paramount, in yourself and more so in each other. I lost so many little ones, and…”

Her mother shivered, tears brimming in her pale violet eyes. She said no more.

“Father blamed her,” Rhaegar said, rubbing Rhaella’s golden spikes. “Over and over, and then Viserys survived, but he was so tiny, so weak. I doubt you even remember him.”

And Dany didn’t, not really. A flash of a young, thin boy looming above her, smiling and wiggling his fingers until she grasped them in a tiny fat fist. Viserys was a name only whispered in her uncle and brother’s hills. Beneath her mother’s roof, Dany had learned long ago never to mention him aloud.

“He was eight when he had his fire dream,” Rhaegar told her. “Willful, too small. Half the size you were when you first transformed, but twice your age. Father belittled him for it, told him to go out flying to be stronger, bigger. One night, after Father left, Viserys flew off across the bay. He wanted to follow him, to find him, but he flew right into a terrible storm. We tried to follow him to bring him back, but it was too late. A few days later, he washed up on shore.”

“And Father?”

“After we mated the summer we made you, he refused to return to his human skin,” Rhaella said. “Honestly, he’d kept his scales all of that spring, too. He sat down in the catacombs, sleeping and eating, roaring if any of us approached him in our human skins. We left him be, me most of all, so that you might survive. Rhaegar was gone, north to find his own mate.”

“And I did. We tried, too. Despite being different shifters. She was a wolf,” Rhaegar explained. “A direwolf from the far north, but willful and beautiful and… gods.”

Both her mother and brother choked on their voices. Dany curled into the space between them, a soothing purr rumbling from her belly. They both leaned into her.

“It was complicated to try with someone who wasn’t a dragon, but we did anyway. And Father… somehow, he knew. Or sensed it. He came north, to the Trident where we were, raging. He was a beast entirely, his eyes wild. Lost. Lyanna ran north and I tried to stop him. I… I failed.”

The story dropped away then, as Rhaegar’s grief swelled to fill the room. Rhaella’s joined, sorrowful and calling out for the people they’d lost. Uncle Aemon stood, shuffled over to kneel before all of them.

“Grief is our curse,” he said, touching first Rhaella’s horn, then Rhaegar’s, and finally Dany’s. “Even if we balance our dragons with our human selves, we will never be without loss. Of mortal friends, even other shifters who do not live as long as us. Moreso, of our own kind, destroying our own family because we cannot allow ourselves to be so many. Our very nature is fractured, splintered like a broken branch.”

He touched Dany’s cheekbone, brushed away her tears.

“Your father almost killed Rhaegar, gave himself fully to his own cruelty, let his worst qualities embolden his dragon skin. The last we knew of him, he chased Lyanna north and…”

Uncle Aemon sighed, a fierce, bitter anger sparking in his touch for the first time in Dany’s memory. She understood it all then. That Aerys had hunted Lyanna down, had roasted her alive, then feasted on her charred, smoking flesh. Whether she’d carried a new little dragon or not hadn’t mattered.

Every being alive was prey to a dragon.

Family, love, and compassion lost all meaning once you gave yourself to the flames.

And someday, some horrible day far into the future, Dany would be the last of their kind. Left behind when her uncle and mother and brother lost their holds on life. On her own, to withstand everything that had claimed her father.

Nothing scared her more than that.

 

* * *

 

As winter’s pale wrath covered their hills, leaving crusts of muddy ice upon the slopes, Dany adjusted slowly back to life amongst her family. She stayed closer to home, measured her time in her scales by the sun trekking across the sky. Both Rhaegar and her mother were swallowed by their old, unquenchable grief. Dany spent more time with Uncle Aemon, reading scrolls and books out loud so that he could enjoy them, too. Every page offered a new fact or story. Each paragraph taught Dany more than before, but nothing could explain how best to make peace with her dragon form.

Restlessness dominated her dragon skin now. Scratching to be let out, more and more, like her onyx beast was pacing along her ribs. She yearned for longer hours in her scales, to slumber in her wings instead of only coasting on daylight’s wind. Uncle Aemon assured her the feeling would fade with time, when Dany shared her fears with him; that as long as she kept her two halves in line, her dragon would settle with time.

“Spring will help,” he told her, gentle purrs calling her closer. “I was a little older than you, the first time I experienced a woman. Thought I was clever and delightful when I showed her my dragon skin. We all learn and grow, Daenerys. Without change, we cannot live.”

“Did you mate with her? On the solstice?”

“She thought me quite silly when I explained our dragon ritual. Then she ran from the sight of my dragon form. For humans, even other shapeshifters, conception is so very easy. Trusting each other to create a child does not establish a sacred, unbreakable bond as it does with us. We must choose wisely, for we’ll never have another chance.”

If he was hinting at her own future, Dany couldn’t see it. All three of her relatives now knew of her dragon dreams, of the boy she’d grown up alongside in her night-time visions. She’d not seen Ghost since that miserable night on the grass sea. Her dreams were no more than smoky voids now. Sometimes, she was human, walking endlessly through the fog. Other times, an onyx dragon, tumbling forever through the gloom, unable to steady herself in the air.

Both dreams made her fear the dawn.

Spring approached, a soft glow of sun lighting the land as winter’s last punch drifted back north. Dany began to explore a little further every day, but not south nor east like before. North was where her wings pulled her, chasing the chill of winter. Trying to beat it further away with the strength of her wings. She discovered a new world each time she flew north. Streams and little lakes, and raging rivers overflowing their banks. To the north and east, snow-capped mountains split the skyline. Bogs steamed to the northwest, strange and haunted.

A few days before true spring reached the land, Dany found herself once more heading north, winter’s winds calling her onward, toward the lake her family called the Gods Eye. But when she landed amongst the crumbling ruins of the castle on it’s northernmost edge, Dany’s nostrils prickled. Winter was still heavy in the air here. A touch of spring like an itch inside her, but something else scented the air. First, a weight of soothing familiarity and then…

_Hot ash._

_A great pale tree with roots of blood._

Dany’s entire body trembled in acknowledgement. She swung around in a great circle, tail lashing the castle’s twisted towers, searching, _searching_ …

North. His scent preceded him in a wide arch, but it was Ghost. Her Ghost, out in the world instead of her dreams.

Dany shrieked as she lifted into the air, eyes scanning the icicle coated trees, their melt dripping onto the slushy ground. She turned and turned in the sky, pursuing his scent trails, and then dove toward the forest. Miles off, at a break in the trees, she found him, a great white wolf lapping gently at a still pond. He jerked upright as Dany’s shadow passed over him.

_He’s here, he’s real._

Even from the sky, Dany could feel the familiar softness of his shaggy fur. Feel the warmth of his hand that had held hers through a hundred dreams.

Her joyful roar filled the forest. Below her, Ghost raised his head as if to howl, but a snag of fear and pain answered. Dany felt it first, as she descended slowly from the sky. Ghost shook his head, then his entire body, a terrible panic drifting to her on the air. She rushed to land, to shift and assure him that she was friendly—to remind him of her dreams, for surely they must be his, too.

Instead, as her back claws brushed the tree line, Ghost kicked and tumbled onto his back. His wolf form faded like a jolt of lightning, replaced by a dark-haired boy, who gave a heaving gasp of pain, before thorny red spikes split the skin on his back. He wore no shirt, only a woolen pair of breeches and soft leather boots. A pair of fragile white wings replaced his arms, jerking and contorting and twitching long after they appeared.

Dany almost lost her footing at the sight. He was a dragon, too. Just as she’d thought for so long in her dreams. Despite his pelt and the lack of spikes and horns and scales, Dany had been convinced.

Dany shifted and hurried to him.

“Ghost, it’s me! We finally found each other and—”

It was then that Dany saw the blood. Not from some horrible wound, but oozing from each of his spikes, for they were not fully extended. Ghost settled on his hands and knees, shaking and crying. His wolf pelt lay on the icy ground next to him.

“You’ve got to let them out,” Dany told him, perplexed. “Your spikes, silly. It’s either in or out with them, or they’ll slice your back and shoulders to ribbons.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, though, nor see her. His back curled, scarlet spikes dragging in and out like a cat flexing its toes. They never settled fully in either position, their sturdier, thicker roots just under the skin. She could see their bulge, like a huge needle trying to push through. Dany dropped down beside him, reached her fingers for the spike on Ghost’s shoulder. As soon as her fingers brushed it, he screamed.

_No no no no._

Fear engulfed Dany. Something was terribly wrong.

Ghost curled up on the ground, sobbing and bleeding, his chest heaving. Every breath seemed to be trying to rip his lungs from his body. Dany sniffed the air, the blood on his spikes, and her fear turned to panic. He’d never transformed before, not even fully pushed his spikes through his skin. No horns adorned his flat temples. Not even a fire dream if she had to guess. But he was her age, sixteen years at least, approaching seventeen. He was far too old to have never done any of those stages.

His wings flapped feebly, ice-white flesh stark against the black bones beneath.

“Can… can you change your wings back?”

Ghost didn’t answer. He didn’t seemed to be able to, but his anguish was clear in the air. Dany grabbed his wolf pelt, did her best to wrap him in it without touching his spikes, then transformed. Her great onyx scales filled the entire clearing.  As carefully as she could, Dany curled her back claws around his body, scooping him up as she took flight.

_Uncle Aemon will know what to do._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehehehehe, didn't think I would make it that easy, did you? Nah, no fun in that.
> 
> -Hops up on a soapbox called Reminders- Since this seems to need repeating, I started this story as part of NaNoWriMo. So yes, I wrote 50k of this story in November. That's 50k of what will probably be around 90k in total, but that 50k is also not edited. (And seriously, if you've ever sprinted out 50k in a month, you'll understand just how much of a disaster that document can be when you start reading back through it. It's like if a nuclear bomb and a malfunctioning auto-correct bot had a word vomit baby. A hot ass mess.) Editing takes time, not only for typos, sentence length, word choices, and so on, but also for plot purposes and continuity. So no, I am not posting everything all at once or doing multiple updates a week. I do not have the time to edit everything in its entirety to make that possible. I also don't want to post everything I've written, then stall out and not update for what would likely be several months. That's no fun for me as a writer, nor for you as a reader. Embers is my main writing priority at present, for the handful of hours I can set aside for writing each week amongst the responsibilities of my daily life. So please, be patient, and (hopefully) enjoy the story as it unfolds.
> 
> Also, for anyone reading Embers, I should have the next update out either late tonight after work or sometime tomorrow! It got rather... wordy, let's say. But I think you'll enjoy this particular wordiness. :)
> 
> So cheers, and I'll see you lovely readers for Chapter 7 next Tuesday!


	7. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who is ready for some dragon action????

When the first sight of their hills glistened under the setting sun, Dany called out a warning roar, singing her worry and panic. It rushed ahead of her, so that when Dany lowered herself and Ghost onto Uncle Aemon’s balcony, her blind uncle was not alone. Rhaegar was there, bronze spikes glinting in the fading light. He watched her descent, shading his eyes to look at the limp figure grasped in her foot.

Dany set Ghost on the balcony, then landed beside him. She shifted to her human skin and found he’d passed out at some point on their flight south. His wings, at least, were human arms once more, but his spikes were still present. As she watched, they tried to push through again, flinching in the cool evening breeze.

“Daenerys, who—” 

His brother’s entire face went slack, a great tremble running through him as he caught sight of the boy’s face. Rhaegar stumbled forward a step, then lost his footing. He sagged to his knees, his gaze fixed on Ghost. Taking in his stubborn scarlet spikes, his shaggy white pelt, his dark curls and long, thin face.

She’d guessed the truth on her hurried flight home, but Rhaegar’s reaction confirmed it.

Ghost was Rhaegar’s son. The boy he’d dreamt about half a lifetime ago.

“My  _ son _ —he looks just as he did in my—” Rhaegar looked ready to faint. His body tilted forward and Dany rushed to catch him before his face smacked the stone. “How? Dany, where did you—”

He didn’t seem capable of finishing his questions. Dany supported some of his weight as Uncle Aemon headed for Ghost, his spikes shifting through the air to locate the boy on the ground.

“Up north,” Dany said. “I went to the Gods Eye and I could smell him, the same as he’s always smelled in my dreams.”

Rhaegar’s eyes remained fixed on his son. Dany made sure he wasn’t going to collapse and then returned to Ghost’s side where Uncle Aemon was kneeling.

“He’s waited too long,” her uncle muttered, his fingers brushing each spike individually. Every single one jerked away from his fingers, tried to slip back into Ghost’s flesh. “Rejected his spikes before, I suspect. It’s such a delicate thing, the first time. One wrong movement or feeling… Come, let’s get him inside.”

Dany gently handed Ghost’s shaggy pelt to Uncle Aemon, but she couldn’t maneuver Ghost inside on her own in her human skin nor fit through the archway as a dragon. She made quite a small woman, and while Ghost was not as tall as Rhaegar, he was still larger than her. She kicked her brother in the foot, and then his thigh to get him moving.

“Help me get him inside.”

Still, Rhaegar sat motionless on the balcony, his tearful eyes fixed on Ghost. Uncle Aemon gave one of his horns a rough yank as he passed. 

“Bring your son inside, Rhaegar.  _ Now _ .”

Together, Dany and Rhaegar lifted Ghost and followed their uncle into Visenya’s Hill. Unlike Aegon’s Hill, Uncle Aemon’s home was made of darker rock, a hint of volcanic ash always lingering in the air. His highest tower had only two windows, one toward the east and the other toward the west. His rooms were less cavernous, more homely and dimmer. 

Carrying Ghost was awkward. His spikes steamed the only time Rhaegar touched them, more blood leaking from the slots in his skin. They both tried to avoid them, hoisting Ghost face down between them, Dany by his booted feet and Rhaegar by his upper arms. Uncle Aemon led them into a bed chamber and motioned for them to set Ghost on the feather mattress.

“On his side or stomach, please. The less pressure on his spikes, the easier this will be.”

They did as instructed, Ghost sagging into the featherbed, still unconscious. Uncle Aemon guided the examination, asking about the coloring of Ghost’s skin around the protrusions, the depth and general size of the spikes, if their roots had knotted through yet. His fingers and other senses had their strengths, but without his eyes his understanding was limited.

“He’s never transformed,” Rhaegar muttered, fretting with Ghost’s white pelt. He gave it a long sniff. “Gods, he’s sixteen—a man now—and he’s  _ never _ even let his spikes break through.”

At first, they draped the pelt over the foot of the bed, but Ghost began to shiver. Sweat coated his visible skin, his spikes moving with more force, until they settled the warm fur over his lower half. All three of them avoided touching him directly.

“They still can, can’t they?” 

Dany’s question was met with an uncomfortable silence.

Rhaegar only sat beside his son, on the edge of the bed. He raised his hand as if to brush his dark curls from his face, then pulled away. Every touch so far had brought forth a heaving jolt of pain from Ghost.

“It’s possible,” Uncle Aemon said carefully. He sighed, set about grabbing various vials and jars from the shelves on the wall, his hands fumbling slowly. “At sixteen, though, it will be much worse. More difficult than even mine at thirteen. The older we are when we finally transform…”

He shook his head, then accidentally knocked a jar off the shelf. It shattered at his feet, soaking his shoes and ankles. Dany hurried over to help, let her uncle name what he needed, then measured it out in the correct quantities, and did as instructed. After several minutes, a creamy liquid sat in a cup.

“For the pain,” he explained. “But I’m afraid it’s a mental hurdle between him and his spikes being freed at this point. We cannot force them out. Rejecting their first occurrence, or not knowing how to handle them, can create a terrible block. A dragon’s transformation is so very different from that of a wolf. Clearly, he’s inherited his mother’s abilities, too.”

He directed her on how to angle the boy’s head right, and then carefully dribble the concoction into his mouth. Ghost woke with a high-pitched gasp. His body arched, spikes flinching. They were much larger than Dany’s had been as a little girl. More of a size comparable to a grown dragon’s, sharp and solid. A choking cry left him.

“Shh, it’s okay, relax. You’re safe here, son. We’re going to help you through this.” Rhaegar stroked his hair, trying to soothe him, but the touch only made Ghost twist away, writhing. “What do we do, Uncle? If we can’t even  _ touch _ his skin, then his spikes…”

Touch was necessary. 

For Dany, she’d needed the comforting contact to adjust to her new appendages, to soften the sensitivity of them bonding with her mind. Only her mother’s and brother’s embraces had calmed her, and let her spikes fully free. Without that, Ghost would continue to reject them, would not calm enough to get through the first, most delicate stage. And if he could not manage the first part...

“Time. Give him time.” 

Uncle Aemon offered a tentative touch to Ghost’s forearm, but that too was met with a gurgle of pain. Ghost’s eyes were hazy, a dark gray that flickered all around the room, but didn’t settle on anything.

“He doesn’t  _ have _ time. Not when he’s in this state.” Rhaegar paced beside them, as his son shuddered and whimpered on the bed. “Gods, I don’t even know my son’s  _ name _ .”

He looked at Dany, but she shook her head.

“I’ve always called him Ghost, in my dreams,” she explained. “He never told me his true name.”

They manage to give Ghost the rest of Uncle Aemon’s concoction, and slowly, his body relaxed again. He didn’t fall unconscious this time, nor drift off to sleep. Instead he rested on his side, his breathing uneven and eyes half-lidded. A haze of exhaustion and pain hung about him. 

Rhaegar hovered, pacing the half circle around the bed, muttering and tugging at his silver-gold hair. Uncle Aemon sat by the only window, eyes shut as a cool spring breeze wafted in. He might have been asleep if he’d not been mumbling quietly to himself. Thinking through their predicament, and how to help the boy on the bed. 

Her mother appeared at dark, the sound of her claws clattering on the stone preceding her hurried footsteps. Rhaella rushed into the room.

“What’s happened? I went south to hunt and heard your call, Dany.”

Her eyes fell on Ghost’s shivering form on the bed. For a long minute, Rhaella took in his face, his curls, the spikes fighting to fully extend themselves along his spine, and then the white wolf pelt over his legs and grasped in his fist. Not long after they’d given him the concoction for pain, Ghost had clutched his pelt in his hands, the tendons so pronounced Dany worried they’d snap and break through his skin. The pelt seemed to be a comfort, though, and he’d quieted since.

“Rhaegar, is he… your mate, Lyanna, this is her...”

She seemed stunned.

“He is.”

Dany watched her mother’s tentative approach, her hand stretching out then retracting as Ghost’s spikes did the same.

“He’s rejecting them,” her mother whispered, wiping her eyes. Her tears surprised Dany. “Oh, sweet boy, you have to let them in.”

“How could he know the way? I wasn’t there to teach him.” 

Rhaegar’s self-loathing swelled about the room until it made Dany gag. Her head pounded in time with the flinching of Ghost’s spikes.

“You couldn’t have known, love,” Rhaella said as she sat beside Ghost’s knee. “And Aerys left you in no condition to fly north to find out. We’ll get him through this, don’t you worry.”

She sniffed and reached out to run her fingers over Ghost’s shaggy white pelt. “He’s beautiful, Rhaegar. And strong. Can’t you feel it, feel  _ him _ ?”

An echoing sob wrenched itself from Rhaegar’s throat. He sunk to the floor, shaking and mumbling. “It’s my fault he’s like this. All of this. Everything I did—but I loved her, Mama, and now…”

Rhaella went to him in a swirl of her skirts, but her hand brushed Ghost’s skin as she stood. Immediately, he jerked on the bed, his pain like a sharp stabbing behind Dany’s eyes. Instinct drove her to his side, to soothe, to help, to remind him of every dream she’d ever had of them. Dany closed her hand over his where it clutched his wolf pelt.

“Shh, I’m here.” Dany lay down facing him. His hand flinched under hers, then stilled as her fingers stroked the soft skin between his knuckles. Just as he always did to her. “Remember? You always made sure we held hands on our cliff, so we wouldn’t be scared. As long as we’re together, that’s what you said.”

He blinked slowly at her, his eyes still cloudy with pain. All of his usual gentle humor and soft tones were absent.

“You…” He coughed, his voice hoarse as a wisp of smoke escaped his mouth. Another good sign, though she hoped everything wouldn’t happen all at once. A complete transformation now might tip his mind over the edge.  

“Yeah, it’s me. From our dreams.”

Ghost shut his eyes with a grimace of pain. He didn’t release her hand, however, but clutched it tighter as he shifted toward her. Dany wiggled closer to meet him, easing their joined hands up between their chests as Ghost buried his nose in the curve of her neck. She could feel him inhaling her scent, warm gushes of breath moistening her skin.

“You smell like lemons,” he murmured. “Brimstone, too.”

Dany laughed. “I do, yeah. You’re like hot ash and… some strange tree sap. The big white tree with red leaves.”

“Weirwoods.”

“We don’t have those down here,” Dany said. “I’m Dany.” 

He relaxed against her. “Jon.”

“I’ve been calling you Ghost.”

“That’s my direwolf form. Pack calls me Ghost.”

Jon said no more then. He nuzzled his face against her neck, sniffing her scent as he drifted off to sleep. Dany stroked his curls, almost shut her own eyes until someone cleared their throat.

Rhaegar, Rhaella, and Uncle Aemon were watching her in amazement. Dany peered over Jon’s shoulder at them.

“Is this the boy from your fire dream?” her mother asked. She sat carefully behind Jon, reached a tentative hand out to touch his forearm. Once again, his body shuddered, his spikes retracting further. Rhaella let go immediately.

“He is.” Dany stroked his hair, then gently dragged her fingers over his arm. “He needs to sleep a bit, before he gets them out.”

How she understood that, Dany could only guess. But Jon’s exhaustion felt as much like hers as it was his. Dany shut her eyes then, and began to purr, quiet and deep, dozing off as Jon wrapped his arms around her.

 

* * *

 

Their bedchamber was dark and silent when Dany woke later. Her uncle, brother, and mother were gone. Jon was still asleep, warm and calm against her chest. His spikes, however, were still visible, little points slicing through his skin and bleeding freely. Dany almost reached for his closest shoulder spike, then hesitated.

“Jon?” 

Dany ran her fingers through his hair, gave his scalp a soft scratch. He shifted and mumbled.

“Hey, wake up. We need to get your spikes free.”

He muttered something against her neck, then pulled away. Their eyes met, less than a breath apart. Warmth flooded Dany’s belly, her happy purrs growing louder on instinct. She brushed the thrilling eagerness off. Now was not the time for that.

“You have to let your spikes out,” Dany told him quietly. “Have you ever tried before?”

“All they do is hurt.”

Dany stroked his cheek. “They do, the first time, until they’re completely out. It’s not as bad when you’re younger. I was four when mine showed up.”

“ _ Four _ ?”

“Yes, they were tiny compared to yours. You probably would have been sooner if you’d been here with us.”

Jon considered her words. “Maybe. For us, my pack I mean, we start shifting fully when we’re little. Not even a year old. We just don’t learn how to control it until later.”

“Dragons are different,” Dany told him. “We go through stages before we can fully shift. First, spikes and wings. Smoky breath, too. Then we grow horns after our fire dream. After that, we learn to take our dragon skins.”

He nodded, then flinched in pain. “I don’t know how.”

“You just… push them out.”

She couldn’t explain it any better than that. For her, the hardest part had happened while she was asleep. Her spikes had been a quarter of the size that Jon’s were now. And at four, Dany didn’t recall most of that day. Just the general excitement of taking her first step toward her dragon skin. Her mother and uncle and brother doting on her, hugging and kissing and rubbing her new spikes.

“Touch is important,” Dany said. “Spikes are really sensitive at first, so my mother used to rub them every night to help. Until they get used to… well, everything. Air, touch, scents. Maybe I can try that?”

At Jon’s nod, Dany reached for his shoulder. She rubbed his skin at first, all around the scarlet spike’s point. Dried blood flaked off against her fingertips, and then an ooze of fresh blood slicked her palm. Jon shuddered with every pass closer. He buried his face against her neck once more, and Dany steeled herself.

Then she let her fingers rub the spike’s base.

Jon jolted against her, a sharp gasp of agony brushing Dany’s skin. But she kept her fingers against the tough cartilage. It felt different from her own spikes, more jagged and thinner, and way too grown for someone who’d yet to accept their dragon skin. To take their wings on the air and fly.

After a few moments, Jon relaxed, his weight sinking back into her. Dany rubbed the spike, soft at first, then less tentatively. Slowly, it extended itself until Dany could feel the spike’s root once again bulging at Jon’s skin.

“That’s it, just relax.” Dany purred against him, a soft comforting lullaby her brother had once sang for her. “Let yourself feel them, just like your other senses. Focus your mind on it, on welcoming it, and then…”

Dany rubbed his skin in small, soothing circles. It was several minutes before anything happened, but then Jon’s shoulder spike twitched. It retracted an inch, then snapped upward. The root broke through the skin, left Jon heaving in surprise and then relief.

Several shudders ran through him, and slowly, as Dany lifted her head, she watched the rest of his spikes do the same. Like a wave across his back, spike after spike broke through his raw and bleeding skin. Clusters appeared on his shoulder blades then followed the column of his spine to his lower back. His pattern was quite different from her own, like a great tree spreading over his back. With the last one, the largest at the base of his spine, a sturdy pale ice one, Jon sagged against her. His bliss crashed over Dany as she touched the first spike on Jon’s shoulder. It seemed to almost vibrate in her hand before tilting into her grasp.

“You did it,” Dany whispered, smiling as Jon clutched her close. “How do you feel now?”

He only groaned, happy and very heavy against her chest. 

She could feel his relief though. With every spike she touched his joy melted into her fingertips, warm and content and familiar. Dany rubbed his side, then took her time touching his back. One by one, Dany caressed each, let Jon’s senses adjust to them being fully part of his body. By the time she was done, sleep had claimed Jon once more.

Across the room, the bedchamber’s door creaked open. Rhaegar’s face appeared, then the rest of him when Dany raised her head.

“How is he?”

In answer, Dany rubbed at Jon’s largest spike. Unlike the rest it was white and triangular at its base instead of circular, just above the waistband of his breeches. Rhaegar approached, then dropped to the bed behind Jon. Tears ran down his face.

“You helped…  _ gods _ . What sort of father am I? I can’t even help my own son.”

“A good one, I think. You and Uncle Aemon have both been one for me.”

Rhaegar’s hand hesitated to touch Jon’s back, his flexing spikes. They were testing the air, Dany knew, feeling the temperature, any shifts in the winds, searching for the best air currents for flight. Learning and growing already.

“He’s got them out at least,” Rhaegar said. “Let’s hope that’s the worst of it.”

“The worst?”

“Uncle Aemon said… we’ve been reading through some old scrolls while you both slept,” he told her. “Trying to find the family records of everyone else’s shifting stages. What ages they were.”

“And?”

“Most were nine to thirteen.The oldest was nineteen,” Rhaegar said, worry creasing his brow. “His body grew to adult size as a dragon, but his wings never did. They were stunted, fragile. His human arms had already stopped growing. Eventually, his dragon skin withered and so did he. By his twenty-first name day…”

Without her brother finishing his sentence, Dany understood. That young man had died. A dragon-shifter who grew past youth without changing would not survive. Their two halves would never find unity, and the pain of that first transformation alone, as a grown man or woman, would be excruciating. Even unbearable. That pain would never dissipate or lessen. Every transformation would rip them anew, leave their body throbbing in anguish for days on end. 

If Jon’s human form was not still growing…

“Jon will be fine.” Dany kissed his forehead, tried not to think of his small, pale wings he’d sprouted in the clearing. They’d more or less been the same length as his human arms. “He’s already got his spikes out.”

“Thanks to you.” Rhaegar examined his son’s scarlet spikes, then grabbed a cloth from the wardrobe. “Let’s clean him up and see how his skin has faired. Hold him still.”

She only needed to purr to keep Jon quiet. He slept on as Rhaegar wiped the dried patches of blood away and the fresher trails. No more blood appeared, even as Rhaegar watched and tilted his head to look at the skin beneath each. Like Jon, relief left her brother in waves.

“Next is wings, then smoke and purring. If he’s lucky, it’ll be quick.”

“He had wings,” Dany said. “When he first saw me in the clearing, they came out with his spikes. White like his wolf pelt. And I bet he beats me. Six months, tops.”

Rhaegar laughed, a watery sound that brought tears to his eyes again. 

“Gods, I have a  _ son.  _ He’s truly here, just like my dreams.”

Once more, he reached for Jon, and after a few seconds of hesitation, his hand rested on Jon’s shoulder spike. The first one to break through, a striking bright scarlet like the leaves of the weirwood Dany had seen in her last dream of him.

Nestled in her arms, Jon nudged at her with his nose, but remained asleep. A great sigh left Rhaegar at his son’s calmness. Slowly, he did as Dany had earlier—like he’d done for her years before. His fingers scratched at the spike’s ridges, the little grooves already beginning to form. The spike flexed in response to Rhaegar’s scratching. Her brother began to sing then, softly as his purrs rumbled in his belly. Dany purred with him, cradling Jon close.

Together, they serenaded Jon with their soothing melody. His spikes flexed to their rhythm, like a heartbeat adding to their song. Rhaegar’s last wavering note seemed to hover in the air, like a lulling, gentle hum hugging each of them. Despite sleeping for several hours already, Dany found her eyes drifting closed.

It was only then that she felt it. A soft rumble from Jon’s chest, stuttering, but distinct.

A purr, one strangely like her brother’s and yet different, too.

“Do you hear him?” Rhaegar was smiling, wiping his eyes as he ran shaking fingers through Jon’s dark curls.

She nodded, rubbed Jon’s temple with her thumb, testing for a firm horn ready to grow through. His skin was still soft, but her touch made his purr deepen. The sound swelled against her, thrumming wonderfully along her skin as it found its steadiness and descended into his belly. Jon’s purr lingered on her skin, found her own soft, soothing one and adjusted to it. Even asleep, the feat was impressive.

“He’s a natural like his father.”

Rhaella watched them from the doorway. She was smiling through her tears, too. Like Rhaegar, she looked over Jon’s spikes, happy but fretful.

“I’ll help Uncle Aemon make a salve for him,” she said. “Chaffing and red, but no burns. No more bleeding now they’re through, thankfully. Has he tried retracting them yet?”

“No.”

“In the morning,” Rhaegar decided. “He needs to rest, and then… we all should meet properly before we start guiding his dragon-shifting.”

Their mother agreed. Rhaegar kissed Jon’s head, then covered both of them in a thick blanket. They wished Dany a good night, then left. 

Jon’s rumbling purrs filled the dark room, warmed Dany right to her toes. She let her own voice rise to meet his, and drifted off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Dawn light woke Dany.

She was nestled in perfect warmth, content in a plush featherbed beneath a heap of furs that smelled of lemony hot ash and weirwood sap. Jon’s purrs still rumbling against her torso, strong and steady. Dany curled into his heat, smiling as his familiar scent enveloped her. He was still asleep, his spikes prickling at the chilly morning air. Dany rubbed his back, lazily scratching a few of his spikes, but when she reached the back of his neck, the beginnings of a fleshy frill was already growing in. A single one along his neck instead of the pair upon hers.

“I told Rhaegar you’d beat me,” she murmured. 

Dany traced the frill’s swooping length, ending at the knot of bone on the base of his skull. Over the next few months, the frill would grow in fully as Jon’s body adapted to the changes. She scratched it, too, though it was not more than a half inch protrusion from his human skin. Jon’s purr deepened to a dull roar with each curl of her fingers. He shifted in her arms, preening, legs stretching as he pressed closer.

Arousal grew heavy in the air. 

A great pulse of desire ran through Dany as Jon nosed at her neck. His hips jerked forward, and Dany inhaled sharply. Jon’s cock was hard. He pressed himself against her thigh, a muffled groan vibrating against her skin. Dany shivered. Her cunt throbbed as she pressed her legs together, already growing wet. Just his smell was intoxicating, but scenting his arousal, feeling it against herself…

She whimpered, pressed her nose into his curls. His smell was even stronger there, made the warmth pool hotter in her belly. Her purrs rose, urgent and needy, harmonizing to his own. Having someone who could match her in such a way was almost too much. Overwhelming and unbearably necessary. Her pulse itched for his touch, to discover how his body fit with hers. To know him in all the ways she didn’t already.

But Jon was asleep, unconscious of his arousal and more so of how to control the new changes as his dragon came alive. 

_ He’s just reacting to his spikes being free, to the strength it adds to his senses. _

But knowing that didn’t stop her own body’s response. Dany squirmed against his warmth, rubbed her thighs together for friction. Jon’s hand curled around her back, closing around one of her spikes. Unlike his, her largest was higher, level with her ribs, but circular like the rest. A dark crimson, a little rough on the surface like a porous rock. Jon stroked in, grumbled against her neck still, his hips bucking against her thigh.

Her nails bit into his fleshy frill and Jon woke with a yelp. He pulled away slightly, blinking sleepily in the morning light. 

“Dany?”

“It’s, um, morning,” she said.

Jon sniffed, slow and deep, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. His entire body went stiff then, his cock still hard against her thigh. Arousal was heavier than perfume in her nose. Gray eyes found hers, pupils fat with desire.

“Hi.”

Dany nodded. Her throat was tight, body tingling with nerves and want and the weight of his cock, hot against her. Desperate. Just as she was.

“How does your back feel? Your spikes?”

Jon shifted his shoulders a bit, stretching. He glanced at his shoulder not resting on the bed and wrinkled his nose at the sight of the scarlet spikes. 

“A bit sore. Sight’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Good, that’s… good.”

Dany swallowed as his eyes drifted to hers again. Then down to her lips, his breathing shallow. Her thighs were slick with her need, a hot throb in her cunt as Jon’s fingers stroked her spike once more. She brushed hers over his fleshy frill, a great shiver running down his body.

“Jon?”

He shuddered when Dany repeated his name, another rush of arousal saturating the air.

“Are you—in my dreams, there was… was someone else. A human man. You and him…”

She shook her head, cupped Jon’s cheek. “He’s in the past, where he belongs.”

He leaned forward, his forehead bumping hers. Dany pressed in, meeting his lips hungrily. They both groaned as their lips slotted together. 

She was home in that instant. Not lost in dreams or fantasies, not tucked away in one of their hills or soaring across the open skies. Jon was absolute, an epiphany of flesh.

He bit her lower lip, teasing its plumpness, but Dany didn’t have the patience for a sensuality. Another time, they would explore sweetness, but lust was spiralling down around them like a tornado meeting the ground. Now felt like all they had. This one simple instance to mate, to join, to experience the power of their union. He seemed to agree as Dany tugged at his waist, rolling them so that he was above her.

They fumbled at each other’s clothes, Dany with the laces on Jon’s breeches and Jon with the shoulders of her silky dress. Dany beat him, shoving his breeches down his hips and taking his thick cock in hand. She gave him a firm stroke, his skin silky hot as it slipped over the head of his cock. He moaned and rolled his hips to meet her movements.

“Gods, I’m… you smell so _good_. Like _mine_.”

Jon nosed at her jawline, humming and shivering as Dany continued her ministrations. 

“You, too. This is okay?”

He nodded, used his hips to nudge her thighs apart. Dany welcomed him eagerly, her clit swollen, her cunt plump with arousal. As he settled against her belly, Dany released his cock and rolled her hips to meet his jerking movements. Nothing had ever felt as exquisite as his muscular body pressing her down. Together, they rocked, rough and desperate, purrs vibrating where their bellies met. 

Jon sucked at her neck. Nipped and bit and dragged his tongue over her throat, then pushed at her dress to free her breasts. He scraped his teeth down her chest, up the swell of her breast to her soft nipple. Jon gave it a languid suck, swirled his tongue around the rosy peak until her skin was tingling, her cunt soaked. He did the same to her other breast, teasing her nipple with several firm flicks of his tongue. She was panting when Jon released her pebbled nipple, arching upward to chase his warm mouth. Her dress tore as he freed her from it.

Dany yanked him close again, reaching down his back to squeeze his ass. “I need to feel you.”

Jon rolled his hips down hard, letting the underside of his cock drag over her folds, rubbing at her clit. Dany rocked with him, her senses slowly splintering as pleasure engulfed her. Jon’s scent was everywhere. In her nose, her thoughts, her skin, in the flavor of him on her lips, in the air brushing her horns.

His mouth sought hers, tongue swiping at her bottom lip. Her legs were pinned then, knees hooked by his elbows and pushed back toward her chest. Dany expected her body to resist the position. For her dragon to fight against the hold. Nobody had ever taken control of her while mating nor expected her to submit in any way. 

But a strange peacefulness swept over her as Jon’s dark eyes stared down at her. She ran her hands up his sides, then down to his ass. Beneath his body, Dany was safe. Whole somehow, more so than ever before. 

“Good?”

“Yes, take me.”

Jon arched his hips back, cock bobbing, then reached down to line himself up with her opening. He teased her then, the fat, blunt head of his cock rubbing over her wetness, a delicious pressure, but not enough. Not what she wanted. Dany tried to rock down, to push herself onto his cock, but he’d locked her in place. Only her arms could move, scratching up his ribs, trusting him to lead them.

He kissed her then, dropping to his forearms, forcing her legs wider and higher. Dany lost herself in his taste, a little stale from sleep but a warm spice, too. Cinnamon maybe, but smoky like his scent. His cock continued to press at her cunt, a delightful friction that promised what she craved.

“Jon, please.”

He groaned against her muffled whispers, nibbling at her lips as she continued to beg. Quickly, her whines turned to demands, teeth gritted and hips wiggling urgently. She scratched his ribs again, enough to pierce his skin. Then he obeyed. With one sure thrust, Jon sheathed his cock fully into her heat. She cried out at being taken so swiftly, at the relentless pace he set without so much as a pause. He gave her no chance to adjust, no soft moment of ragged breaths mingling between them; for her muscles to relax at his intrusion.

Jon fucked hard. He seemed half a wolf, lost in her scent, grunting and rolling his hips until she let herself get lost, too. Every thrust made her cunt tighter, gripping his cock, trying to keep him buried deep. Dany arched toward him, clutched at his back, fingers squeezing his spikes. Every brush against them made Jon groan and snap his hips harder. His cock pressed deep, right up against her womb, a sharp, dizzying pressure in her belly. She squirmed in need as he fucked her, toes curling at the cool air, her eyes rolling upward.

“Fuck, you’re tight. Come on my cock, yes, like that.”

His teeth scraped her neck, his breath hot on her flushed skin. Dany slid her arms around his neck, caught hold of his frill with her fingers. Jon whimpered, his thrusts a brutal slap that made Dany’s vision swim and her belly clench. Her thighs quivered against Jon’s arms. He dropped his forehead to her breastbone, driving into her with enough force to rock the bed.

The tension in Dany’s body spiraled higher, beyond the clouds until the air felt thinner than a wisp of mist. Her throat went tight, chest flushing hot, her voice lost as her muscles went stiff. Jon chased her orgasm, muttering encouragements against her skin, using his hands to push her knees into the featherbed. As her ass lifted to meet his thrusts, Dany cried out.

Blissful pleasure crashed over Dany, cresting like a thundering, suffocating tide. Her cunt squeezed around Jon, pulling him deep as he slammed into her. Jon called out her name, shuddering. His warm seed filled Dany, cock pulsing in time with the waves of her orgasm. She welcomed his weight as he collapsed on her.

They settled together in the quiet, their breathing slowing. Jon nuzzled her neck, nipped her earlobe then soothed it with his tongue. Dany shivered, a spark of delight racing down her spine. It came to rest at her largest spike, a comfortable, hot pressure. Her eyelids drooped as her orgasm faded, left her body heavy like her muscles were cooling steel.

“Mmm, Jon.” She scratched at his damp curls, rubbed her nose against his ear. “You’re mine, always.”

Only then did Dany notice the distinct change in their individual purrs. Instead of her soft, higher purrs and Jon’s deeper tone, their bellies rumbled together, a gentle easy song of contentment. Of commitment. She couldn’t have told their purrs apart then if she’d tried.

Dany scooped Jon’s face between her hands and angled their lips together for a sweet kiss. Jon smiled against her mouth, like a sleepy, happy wolf pup. His cock began to soften inside her and he made to pull out.

“No, stay.” Dany shifted her legs until Jon’s arms released her, then she hooked her left thigh over his hips and carefully rolled them back onto their sides. “A bit longer.”

Jon laughed, a soft huff of breath. His eyes crinkled as he smiled. 

They kissed for a long time. A great sweeping peace filled Dany as Jon’s lips brushed her, happy and tentative. His cock grew hard again as their kisses deepened. Before Dany could blink, they were mating once more. Sweat soaked their bedding, made Dany’s skin sticky as Jon’s hand gripped her ass and held her to his cock. Her cunt was tender already, gushing with his seed and her own wet arousal. 

Dany hissed when his thrusts grew too rough.

“You okay?”

“Bit sore,” Dany mumbled as Jon stilled. She rubbed his back and found his spikes were gone. Smooth skin covered his spine and sweaty shoulder blades. “Here.”

She rolled Jon onto his back, his cock slipping from her. As she pinned him beneath her hips, Dany rubbed her slick cunt over his cock. Jon moved to sit up, but Dany forced him down. Her nails dug into his firm shoulders as she hovered over him.

“My turn.” 

Dany leaned down and placed a light kiss on his swollen lips. She felt dizzy as she watched Jon chase her mouth, almost delirious at the ecstasy rushing through her from their first union. He was perfect beneath her, eyes equally drowsy and lustful, his thumbs brushing over her hip bones as she grasped his hard cock, then lowered herself onto it. She sunk down slowly, then up with every shudder and groan that left Jon. After a brief sting of discomfort, Dany seated his cock fully inside her.

“ _ Fuck _ .”

Jon squirmed beneath her, his hips rolling, urging her to move again. Dany brushed her fingertips over his nipples as she began to move, rolling her hips as she braced herself with her palms flat on his hard stomach. He only held her waist as she worked herself on his cock, dropping down hard enough that a wet smack echoed around the room. Her cunt felt raw, slick and open, but already pulsing with the need for more. To have Jon a second time sealed her heart like a brand; his seed, his cock, his kiss were hers.

“You feel so good, Jon.”

His hands found hers, lacing their fingers together, palm to palm. He helped her ride him with his strong grip, balancing her movements with the easy rolls of his hips to meet her. Dany moaned at the sensation, her head dropping back and her eyes drifting shut. Jon felt incredible inside her. Thick and hard, his cock kissing her womb as she tilted her hips back.

He gave a warning gasp, his hands squeezing hers tighter. A second later, Dany felt his seed fill her belly once more, less than before, but delightfully warm as she rode him through his orgasm. She kept moving even when his hands dropped, her own need tingling down her spine, knotting at the base of her spine and deep in her cunt.

“Stay hard for me,” Dany panted. “Gods, please, I’m so close.”

Jon’s thumb found her clit then, a firm, circular pressure as he rubbed her hard nub. Dany keened, her thighs trembling as she rode faster, the tension in her belly snapping tight before releasing. She called out his name, wobbling above him, then collapsing forward as she came. His cock slipped from her.

It was a time before either of them managed to speak. 

“Wow.”

Jon gave a sleepy hum. “Aye. That was…”

“It was.” Dany slid off his chest and cuddled into his side, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re finally here.”

Jon kissed her forehead, nuzzled her sweaty hair. A soft, snuffling snore followed, the sound tangling with Jon’s quiet purrs, lulling her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully those lovely dragon butts did not disappoint.
> 
> Just a heads up, there's a good chance I'll be skipping a week at some point soon. We're nearly caught up with what I originally wrote for this, and right now, Embers is my writing priority. I'm going to juggle as best I can, but I'm expecting to skip posting one week to try to keep a backlog of this story so I can maintain weekly updates. Not next week, but one of the two weeks after that. Either January 29th or February 5th. We'll see how productive the writing is!
> 
> I will see you dears next Tuesday :)


	8. Amongst Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Tuesday, another update!
> 
> We're back to Jon POV for a few chapters. Enjoy!

Peace smelled of soft skin and warm darkness.

Jon buried his face in Dany’s silky hair, listened to the steady gush of her breath ghosting over his skin. She was miraculous curled up against his side, a dream he’d had before but far more magnificent in person. He rolled into her, cradling her against him, sinking down, down, down into her scent he’d been chasing for what felt like a lifetime.

Journeying south had been the only idea that made sense. Jon had gone sooner than his pack had wished. Kissing his mother goodbye, hugging his cousins, uncles, and aunt, letting his grandmother hold him tight in the morning mist, feeling how worried Mama and Nana Lyarra were. All of them wondering if they’d ever see him again. He hadn’t been able to explain it properly, the need to go immediately instead of waiting for spring. Winter was the time. Spring, somehow, would be too late to find her.

_ Dany _ . _ I know her name now, and her smile. Her kiss, the way her voice catches right before she comes, how soft and right her skin is against mine. _

He grinned into her silver-gold hair, then jumped as prickly spikes pushed through his back and shoulders. They were still uncomfortable, a weird, extra weight on his torso. No blood greeted their appearance this time, however, nor pain. A little tender, perhaps, but not agony and blinding torment that curled his spine and made his legs numb.

Still, Jon kept his face pressed to Dany’s hair, brushed his nose against one of her crimson horns. He let his other senses test his new appendages. Relaxing was instinctual with Dany’s warm body flush against his.

His spikes were strange. They gave him no room to forget what he was anymore, as they flexed in the mild air. Like if each of his teeth could taste on their own instead of his tongue. Or if he had a dozen ears on his back, but they couldn’t hear. Not see nor taste nor hear and not touch entirely either. He could  _ feel _ Dany’s scent with them just as much as his nose could smell her tang of lemon and fiery brimstone. 

Somehow, he understood the temperature, too. That the breeze from under the door was from a firelit chamber, that high above a spring shower was falling and sweeping the air currents about. His temples burned then, aching like a crisp headache. Jon rubbed them, but found only his normal skin. Not like the horns on Dany’s head.

Nor the other people he’d seen last night. He couldn’t recall much of them, but he was certain there’d been more people than just Dany. Another woman, older than his own mother. And two men, both scented like flowers.

One of the men entered the room then, accompanied by the gentle sway of a summer meadow: wildflowers, roses, lilacs. Even daisies and sunflowers and tulips. Jon scented each one as he drew closer to the bed, from the man’s shuffling toes to his wispy hair.

He stayed still, suddenly very aware of how naked both he and Dany were. Of their urgent mating still lingering heavy and pleasant on the air. Time had passed, a few hours at least, but the smell was near overwhelming. Jon made to peek at the elderly man, but a soft chuckle stopped him. His spikes retracted a few inches into his skin, like a groundhog ducking into its burrow.

“No need to be nervous, dear boy. I’ve been around long enough to know when to expect two people to become lovers. Nothing was subtle about your scents yesterday, even with you unconscious.”

Cheeks burning, Jon untangled himself from Dany and sat up. He tugged his pelt over their bare legs and waists. When he turned to greet the newcomer, however, Jon found a set of pale, sightless eyes and a liver-spotted forehead adorned with lilac-white horns. They were much longer than Dany’s, but smelled fossilized in spots. As if they’d not seen their true skin in a great number of years, except for the strands of lilac slipping up from the roots.

Another dragon, Jon realized, though his fire seemed a thousand miles away. He was very old, perhaps twice Nana Lyarra’s age. Weak-boned, thin, a little shaky in his movements. 

“I—we…” 

Jon couldn’t think of how to explain himself. He’d been rushed to this man’s home, wherever they were now, to help him. To perhaps save his life. He was a guest here, but then Dany’s soothing presence had been like a jolt of lightning to his mind and body. Having her was instinct. Holding her, kissing her, pleasuring her. But these strangers might not see it that way. They’d welcomed him into their home and then he’d spent half the day mating with Dany instead of thanking them profusely.

He swallowed as the old man approached.

“I left you fresh clothes on the chair,” he told Jon, gesturing toward a rocking chair near the door. He raised a small jar filled with a rosy paste. “A salve for your spikes, the skin is always quite raw afterward.”

Jon accepted the jar. “Thank you, um…”

“I am your Uncle Aemon,” the man said, smiling kindly. “Great-great-great uncle unless my mind’s grown as weak as my bones. Your grandmother and father are here, too.”

If he’d been standing, Jon would have fallen over. 

“My father’s here? He’s  _ alive _ ?”

Uncle Aemon nodded, reached out a trembling hand and pressed his fingertips to Jon’s jaw. He laughed happily at the brush of scruff growing in, then traced a line up to Jon’s temples. When he found them as human as always, Uncle Aemon frowned.

“Any soreness here, Jon? Odd warmth like a headache?”

Jon almost shook his head, but recalled the feeling he’d had when he’d first woken up. “For a moment earlier, maybe.”

“Good, then perhaps… well, we’ll see. We’ve much to discuss, my boy. I’ll let you dress, then come have something to eat on the balcony.”

Uncle Aemon squeezed Jon’s arm, then left him. 

For several moments, Jon sat beside Dany, adoring her smooth arms, her tumble of silver-gold hair, the soft pink plushness of her lips, and more so, the great crimson horns growing from her temples.

_ Will I end up with those, too? _

The thought felt strange, made him clutch his shaggy pelt closer. His spikes curled like fingers, then slid back under his skin. Jon winced, but got up to put on the salve and to dress. The clothes Uncle Aemon had left were too long in the legs and arms, the shirt strangely net-like on the back, but Jon rolled each up until his hands and feet were visible. He held the shirt tight against his back by its hem, and let his spikes thread through. Some poked through the holes already available, but others made new cuts. Then he turned back to Dany, smiling in her sleep and sprawled out across the bed.

Jon kneeled down next to her. He brushed a strand of her hair from her face, rubbed her cheek with his thumb until she stirred.

“Jon?”

“Uncle Aemon wants to talk with me.” Jon kissed her once, then leaned in for a second, longer one when he saw how bright her smile was. “He gave me a salve for my back, too.”

“Good, it’ll help. Uncle Aemon’s the best.” She stretched over the entire bed, then curled back up on her side, watching him through her lashes. Dany bit her lip, violet eyes sparkling. “Maybe afterward, we could… spend the rest of the night in here?”

His cock twitched at her suggestion.

“I’d like that, too. If…”

“If what?”

“They won’t object to us, will they? Uncle Aemon and my… the other people he mentioned.”

She laughed like the stars glowing to life in the night sky.

“No, of course not. We’re dragons, Jon. It’s near impossible for us to mate with anyone else. Until you, I don’t think anyone ever succeeded with someone who wasn’t a dragon.”

Her words didn’t make Jon any less worried. Not as concerned about their sudden, growing relationship, of her—the great onyx beast of his dreams—being here and real and as hopeful of him as he was of her. But being the first halfer with dragon blood felt ominous. Dangerous. All the other halfers he’d met before had managed to shift to their other skins with ease by his age. Most had been just children when they’d mastered their unique dualities.

“It’s going to be fine,” Dany said, and her hand reached for his, stroking his knuckles tenderly. “Dragons are different from all the rest. We’ll help you learn to shift and then we can fly together.”

His chest swelled at the idea. Being high over the land or sea, above the storm clouds where the sun never abandoned the day. Of having the wind lifting his wings, or diving and twirling in the twilight, while Dany’s onyx scales gleamed at his side. A puff of smoke choked him, left a gray haze in the air.

Dany giggled and waved it away.

“See? That’s  _ good _ , Jon. You’ll be faster than me, even if your dragon isn’t as big.”

It didn’t feel very good, however, a clogged scratchy itch he could never reach. Jon cleared his throat and tried to shake the feeling away.

“I’ve always wanted to fly,” he told her quietly. “Ever since I was little. I dreamt about it all the time. Of a dragon’s song, too.”

“I dreamt of you.” Dany pulled his shaggy pelt up over her bare chest and inhaled. She yawned. “You always had this on, covering your face.”

“We were dragons in my dreams, always in scales.” Jon flushed at the memories, at their joint flights across the sky. “We would dance across the sky, the clouds. Singing like tomorrow would forever be a memory, then curl up together on this cliff by the sea, purring like… like we did last night.”

Feeling that vibration inside himself had been an odd experience. Comforting, but jarring as well. Dany’s own purrs had been just as he’d dreamt them, soft and beautiful and more soothing than burying himself in a furry direwolf pile with his cousins. Everything about her was better than his dreams. Her loving scent, the brimstone heat of her skin, the way her slim hand fit in his.

Jon stood at the sounds of approaching footsteps. His pelt was offered back to him, but Jon hesitated to take it. Without his pelt, he’d be unable to shift to Ghost, but seeing Dany snuggled up in his second skin, happy and sated and still drenched in their combined scents, gave him pause. He hoped to see that same sight every morning for the rest of his life.

“Keep it for now,” Jon told her. He tucked it back in around her, and let Dany draw him in for a soft kiss. “You look good together.”

She went back to sleep as someone knocked softly on the door. Jon answered it, and found the older woman he vaguely recalled from the night before. 

“Supper’s ready.” She peered past him at the bed, not looking particularly surprised to find Dany sleeping. “Come.”

Jon followed her into the next chamber, shutting the door tight. Like Dany, this woman was quite a bit shorter than him, with the same silver-gold hair and violet eyes. Unlike Dany, a few wrinkles curled around her mouth and eyes, her horns a vibrant, gleaming gold.

“I’m Dany’s mother, Rhaella. Your grandmother.”

Her words gave Jon pause, made him fumble a step as they walked through a dim, firelit chamber, toward a ruby glow and fresh air.

_ Dany’s my aunt _ .

Lovers and family. Somehow, the realization seemed more abstract than it should. Her scent was his. Her taste a perfect mixture of sweet and salty and sharp on his tongue. Dany was his, as he was hers. A dizzying, abrupt consideration, but Jon felt as if he’d known her forever, despite only just meeting in person the day before. Blood didn’t matter.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you, Jon.” Rhaella paused in the archway between the chamber they were in and the balcony beyond. Her eyes were paler than Dany’s, more of a soft lilac than a true, bright violet. “I’m so glad you’re here. I always hoped for a grandchild and… gods, let me hug you.”

Rhaella scooped him into a fierce hug, stroking his curls and spikes. They shivered at her unfamiliar touch, assessing her scent like a roaring campfire and molten rock. She took his face in hand when they pulled apart, examining his features. For a moment, Jon hoped to hear she saw something of his father in him, that he wasn’t entirely Stark in his features. Instead, she only confirmed his suspicions.

“Not a trace of Rhaegar in your comely face,” Rhaella said, sniffling as she brushed her thumbs over his cheekbones. “Well, the eyes a bit perhaps. His are quite dark, too. But indigo, not gray. He can’t grow a beard to save his life. Your spikes are like Dany’s. Hers were scarlet at first, before they darkened to crimson.”

Her hand captured one gently, rubbing over the jagged edges. Jon glanced at it, surprised by how much they’d already changed from their first appearance three months before. They’d been thin, sharp needles at the start. Each was unfurling now, almost like a triangular leaf as its jagged points spread wide at the base.

“Are you hungry? We’ve made a bunch of soup and roasted meats.”

His stomach gave a warbling groan. Rhaella laughed and led him through to the balcony. Before them a wide, sweeping terrace opened onto a beautiful sunset. Hues of orange, rose, and ruby mingled on the horizon. Down below, a flock of gulls squawked at each other. An endless dark bay stretched out to the south and east, juts of hard, gray rock splitting the tides. To the west, Jon could just hear a river rushing past.

“Where are we exactly?”

“South,” a new voice answered, melodic and smooth. Jon trembled in recognition. Even as a man, his father’s voice was like sunlight sparkling on water; warm, distinct, a lovely blending of greatness and strength. “We call the bay the Blackwater, and the river the Blackwater Rush.”

Jon turned to him, found a slim, tall man watching him in awe.

His father. 

Rhaegar looked like his sister and mother, and nothing like Jon did. Silver-gold hair, straight and long, dark indigo eyes, a pair of ribbed bronze horns that glittered like polished metal. A certain sense of melancholy hung around him, a deep, near unbearable sadness that saturated his rosewater and fiery scent. Not like Dany’s brimstone, nor Rhaella’s molten heat, but ashy like Jon’s. Less smoky and more a remnant of an eruption, flakes of ash falling from a charcoal sky like snow. Right then, though, he beamed at Jon, seemed as hesitant to approach as Jon was.

“Jon, I… well, I’m your…”

“Father.” Jon swallowed, felt his spirit soar in his veins, like his father’s song was swirling through the air, becoming a new, protective layer on his skin and spikes. “You’re real.  _ Alive _ . I dreamt about you. Ever since I was little. A great jade dragon, circling the sky, calling for me.”

Rhaegar stepped closer, eyes bright with unshed tears. Jon’s throat grew tight.

“You’re just as I dreamed you would be,” his father said. “I was half your age when I first had that dream, but I knew—I  _ knew _ you were my son. My beautiful, baby boy.”

Jon threw himself into his father’s arms, pressed his face into his shoulder, lost himself in a scent that felt like his mother’s love. Rhaegar caught him, clutched him tight to his chest and kissed his temple.

“I can’t believe your here, Jon. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. If I’d known—if I’d thought your mother had survived, I would have been with you, I swear it.”

“She thought you died,” Jon mumbled against his father’s neck. Tears rushed down his cheeks, dampened his father’s tunic. “Mama never mentioned you until I asked, but I always knew somehow. My dreams, and when I was little. I only wanted to fly. To be as high as the moon and the stars.”

“Lyanna’s still alive?”

Jon sniffled and stepped out of his father’s arms. He nodded and wiped his tears aside.

“She’s at home, with our pack. At Winterfell.”

Rhaegar took a heavy seat at the little table set up for supper. Shock loosened his features, left him silent as Uncle Aemon hobbled into the room and Rhaella led Jon to his own seat. 

“Eat,” she said. “You’re starving, and a growing young man still. At your age, Rhaegar could eat two oxen a day if he went hunting in his dragon skin.”

Jon appraised the food on the table: a great pot of some type of fishy soup, several roasted hunks of meat from quail to stag. Spices filled the room, cutting and full. His mouth watered as Rhaella worked Rhaegar from his shock. As he dug in, the other three watched him through his first bowl of delicious soup, two plates of roasted meat, then another bowl filled to the brim. Uncle Aemon was the only other person to eat, just a small cup of soup that he sipped at while Jon gorged himself.

“This is really good,” Jon muttered as he ripped a chunk of greasy meat off a charred bone. 

“Dragonflame roasts better than anything else.” Rhaella traced one of his shoulder spikes as he devoured another plate. “How do your spikes feel? Tender? Still painful?”

“Little sore, but fine now. Dany taught me how.”

“Yes, you and Dany have quite a bond already.”

His whole body tensed at his grandmother’s words. Rhaegar’s spikes flexed, scenting the air. No doubt all three of them had smelled their mating on his skin. Even now, Jon could feel the fire in his belly from Dany’s touch, the absolute rightness of what they’d done. Not an ounce of guilt trailed after him, no uncertainty or shame. Everything about them felt like the opposite of himself and Ygritte. Dany was where he belonged.

“Yeah, she’s… everything.”

His father nodded, accepting his words. “Sometimes, you just know. I did with your mother, too.”

“Will you go see her?” Jon asked. “She thought you died when your father came after you. Said he ripped you from the sky and then came for her. Seeing you again… it’d mean so much to her.”

“It’s been near twenty years since that day.” His father shook his head, conflict darkening his gaze. “In the summer, perhaps. But right now, my focus is on you. Helping you shift to your dragon skin, to keep you safe.”

“Dany said there were, like, stages.”

Uncle Aemon nodded. “They’re not all definitive. For some they come all at once, for others they’re spread out over several months, even years. You’ve just passed through the first. Tell me, can you retract your spikes at will now?”

Jon screwed up his face, focusing on how they felt in his mind, just as Dany had said. His spikes withdrew from the air, sinking out of sight under his skin. Once they disappeared, it was as if they’d never been there at all except for the crusty salve like a patchwork over his back. He had to push his mind a little harder to bring them back out, but they did so, threading through in their needle form, then fanning out and flexing in the chilly spring air.

“A natural,” Rhaella said. “Dany and Rhaegar were the same.”

“And yesterday was their first appearance?”

His uncle’s question was almost too knowing. 

“No, the third.” Jon shivered at the reminder. “The first time was back at Winterfell, about three months ago. It happened twice that day. I had this dream… a terrible one. More nightmare than dream, I guess. When I woke up the room was full of smoke from my breathing and I had the spikes and…”

“Wings?” Rhaegar suggested when Jon said no more.

“Yes. About arm length or so. And before that, when I was—I went north. The true north past the Wall, and tried to find a mate. Last season.” His skin flushed at his words. With Dany in his life now, instead of just a dragon phantom in his dreams, his first lover seemed less than a memory. “After the first time we tried to, um, make a child, I started dreaming. Of Dany. Us, together, as dragons, dancing across the sky. Then I’d wake and—”

“ _ Dancing _ ?”

His father’s word was so sharp, Jon paused. It was as if he’d said something alarming, but a wondrous look cross each of their faces. Words had never been his strong suit, but whenever he thought about those dreams, dancing was the exact word for what they’d done. Nothing else captured the same feeling or meaning.

“I mean, we were flying. As dragons, you know.”

“And singing, together?”

Jon nodded, confused by their questions.

“Yes, and I’d always wake up feeling like my lungs were aflame. Coughing up smoke or my chest seizing up. That part keeps happening. Had a moment earlier, too.” He frowned at them exchanging their glances, a silent conversation that seemed to tingle in the air between their spikes and horns. “Dany said that was a good sign.”

“It is, dear, oh, it absolutely is.” Rhaella squeezed his hand, then kissed his knuckles. “But the dancing and singing… Jon, that sounds like a dragon dream. A  _ mating _ dream. Or a fire dream trying to come through, only you’ve tried your best to lock your dragon skin away.”

“A fire dream?”

Uncle Aemon explained the term, though it took Jon a while to understand all the elements of a dragon’s transformation. It was so much more complex than shifting to his direwolf skin. Being Ghost was simple. For leaps of time his shaggy pelt felt right, but always easy to find, to slide into whenever he wished. Thinking about it wasn’t needed.

Dragons, however, were far more complicated, an enigma in the shifting world.

“We’re as much a transformation of the mind as the body,” his grandmother told him. “You have to accept the fire in your blood, the truth of it existing as a piece of you.”

“And I haven’t been,” Jon guessed.

Saying it almost felt repetitive. Now that he had more knowledge, he was sure he’d been rejecting it. Nana Lyarra had said the same thing in her own way regarding his alpha status amongst their pack. He was different. Everyone had noticed it when he was a boy, and Jon had done his damnedest to hide the fact. 

“No, I’m afraid not,” his father said. He sighed, brow furrowed. “Jon, it’s dangerous to be your age and to have never had your first shift. Even… deadly.”

His heart plummeted, lungs spasming. Another belch of smoke left him, ashier than the first. Rhaella stroked a smaller spike on his shoulder blade, then rubbed over the fleshy frill on the back of his neck. Jon’s entire body shuddered in delight, his purr revving up to a steady rumble in his belly. Her touch was wonderful, made better by the sensation in his stomach. 

Beside him, Uncle Aemon chuckled. “I daresay Daenerys may be right.”

“Right?”

“She bet you’d beat her time from spikes to flight,” Rhaegar said, but he was smiling to as Rhaella’s fingers scratched one of the curves along Jon’s frill. “That purr is the next step. Means your fire’s coming in, so you can breathe it out once you shift. Usually, it’s not so strong, but if you’ve been rejecting your dragon skin for… for years, then…”

Guilt wafted through the air. Jon’s purrs stopped, Rhaella’s hand dropping.

“It’s not your fault.” Jon grabbed his father’s hand on the table and clenched it tight. “Mama thought you were dead, you thought the same of us. And I never showed any signs growing up, so she kept hoping I was only like her. A direwolf, not a dragon, too.”

“Not signs she recognized,” Uncle Aemon ventured. “Your dreams were one, your scent another.”

Jon flushed at his words, the smoky ash of his smell receded on habit. He drew it into himself as deep as he could, and while it faded, his smell was too strong now. Too dominant, especially the fire he’d kept trapped inside himself.

“Don’t hide it.” 

Dany was behind him, in the archway that led to the firelit chamber. She wore her torn dress again, but his shaggy white pelt was wrapped tight around her shoulders. Marking her as his. A rush of heat flooded into Jon’s belly. His purr started up on its own again, made him jump with how low and deep it was compared to before.

“I love your smell,” Dany continued. She stopped next to him and dragged her fingers through his curls. “It’s all I had of you in my dreams for years and years.”

Jon pulled her in for a kiss meant to be chaste, but that quickly lingered. Dany’s purrs joined his until Rhaegar cleared his throat.

“I’m happy for you both, finding each other, but save that for when you’re alone.” 

They both blushed, but Dany settled herself sideways on Jon’s lap, her arms around his neck. Jon rubbed his cheek on his pelt, humming in contentment. Being without his fur for too long was as jarring as being inside his direwolf skin for days on end.

“Rest up tonight,” Rhaegar told him. “It’s too dark to start instructing you right now. We’ll start tomorrow, at first light.”

“What are we going to do?”

Nobody seemed to have a set idea, though several were tossed around.

“We’ll try a few things to see what helps you best to accept your dragon skin, Jon. Don’t you worry. Together, we’ll figure out how to help you.”

They ate some more as the sun disappeared below the horizon, leaving the world fading in shades of gray and navy. Jon spent more time than not cuddling Dany, nudging her with his cheek, stroking her skin under his pelt. By the time Rhaella and Rhaegar left for their own homes—hills, they call them—Jon’s blood was surging with need. Dany led him back to the bedchamber they’d kept earlier, stripping him naked as they went.

 

* * *

 

Morning arrived far sooner than Jon wished.

While Uncle Aemon slept in, Dany and Jon were dragged from their musky, sex-scented room, sat at the same balcony table from the night before and fed chunky oatmeal. Rhaegar appraised them while they rubbed their eyes and ate clumsy bites.

“When I said to rest, I didn’t mean to fuck half the night,” he told them. He glared at Dany more than Jon. “You know what’s at stake here, Daenerys.”

“At stake?” 

His father’s fear was kept locked deep, but Jon could still smell it, like a paper thin layer on Rhaegar’s skin.

Rhaegar sighed, shameful. “Last night, I told you it was deadly, potentially, to be almost seventeen and to have never shifted before, but… Jon, it’s an agonizing experience. Our family has records of every single person’s timeline. Ages of their first spikes, how they looked, felt, how long different parts took different sexes and people. The oldest was a boy of nineteen. He died less than two years later.”

Terror squeezed Jon’s ribs. Only Dany’s hand rubbing his neck frill calmed him.

“His wings were stunted,” she explained. “They thought his human arms had stopped growing, the bones fusing for adulthood, so his wings did the same.”

“Is that going to happen to me?”

“No!”

“Of course not!”

But Dany and Rhaegar’s uncertainty was louder than their refusals. Jon set his spoon down, his stomach churning like his breakfast was fighting to return to the fresh air. He’d done this to himself, hadn’t he? By refusing his dragon skin, by trying to bury his odd smell and his alpha scent, he’d perhaps brought about his own end. He might never see his mother and grandmother and uncles and cousins again.

“Jon, it was different for him, for Aerion. He’d never shown  _ any _ signs of being a dragon-shifter. Only his scent made them think it was a possibility. No dreams or spikes or anything until he was almost nineteen.”

“What happened to him?”

His father hesitated, swallowed. “Jon, I think it best not to dwell on—”

“Tell me. I want to know the worst, to be prepared in case… just tell me.”

“Aerion’s fire consumed him,” Rhaegar said, his voice shaking. “They call him Aerion Brightflame in the family histories we have. He couldn’t fly, his dragon torso grew and grew and his wings couldn’t lift him. When he tried to stay only in his human skin… eventually, his dragonfire had to escape. Fire burns everything. Dragonflame more than others.”

Jon swallowed, shut his eyes then opened them quickly. A wall of fire greeted him behind his eyelids, roaring all around him, melting his skin from the inside. Dany kissed his cheek, then turned his face to capture his lips, too. No kiss, no matter how wonderful and new, could stop the fear in his mind. Nights from beyond the Wall flashed before his eyes, of the terrible, decrepit dragon he’d encountered in that frozen land. If he did manage to shift, would the pain drive him to become a monster instead?

“But we—dragons, I mean, we’re still good, right?”

Rhaegar and Dany exchanged a look that did little to comfort him. Somehow, it only confirmed his worries.

“Most are,” his father said. “Much of who your dragon is depends on who you are as a human as long as we find balance.”

“Balance?”

“Between our skins,” Dany explained. “If we remain a dragon for too long… dragons are magic, fire made flesh, but a beast in the end. Meant to hunt and nest and be solitary. Staying in that skin for too long, it can… change you. Make you forget how wonderful being human is, too.”

A few tears brightened her eyes, but she swiped them aside and tried to smile at him.  _ For _ him. Without a word, Jon understood, like his body was sinking into a steaming bath, only it was Dany’s life and not water. A memory made his mind hazy, a strange sight of yellow pyramids and a great dragon—his onyx companion—nesting underground, losing herself to her scales.

“Jon?”

He shook himself, blinked away the strands of that dusty, hot landscape. Dany’s past. The realization made his throat tight. She had walked that path already, perhaps was still finding a balance between her two souls. And now, he would have to do the same with three. It made a comforting sort of sense then, to understand why remaining Ghost for too long had always made him so panicky as a boy. Not just because his body longed for his dragon skn, but because too much of one limited his other.

_ I’m meant to be more. Like Dany and Rhaegar—like my father. _

Rhaegar gave Jon’s shoulder a friendly little shake. “Our family has had a mix of both over the centuries, but I think we’re all the better half.”

Jon nodded, considering. “Is it just us now? Because when I went north, beyond the Wall, there was a dragon. An old one. Massive, dark, monstrous.”

Rhaegar stiffened, his eyes sharp. “What color were the flames?”

“Green,” Jon said. He shuddered at the memories. “The eyes, too. It came after me, twice. Ate at least one shifter. I don’t want to become like that.”

“You won’t.” But his father’s face had darkened like the shadow of that old dragon falling over the moon. “You’re safe down here, with us. Don’t worry about him.”

Him. Since his mother’s tale about her and Rhaegar and their eventual separation, Jon had wondered if that terrible dragon was his grandfather. Nobody else made sense, especially with what he knew now.

“He’s my grandfather, isn’t he? That dragon is Aerys.”

Brittleness hardened his father’s words. “If I had to guess, but his fire was never green. Father’s dragonflame was a bright shade of blue. But… I don’t know who else it would be. Dragons, on their own, are extinct. We’re the very last.”

Dany seemed quite upset, too, but she shook it off, and offered Jon another smile.

“We are not the same as him, Jon. Come on, a few months, and you’ll be in the air with me, just like you’ve always dreamed.”

“We’ll worry about what’s in the North later,” Rhaegar said. “Right now, our focus is on making sure you can shift.”

Rhaegar and Dany showed him to the wide balcony. Overhead, the sky was a clear, bright blue, cloudless and hinting at warmth. Spring was approaching. Jon shivered as the stronger air currents touched his spikes for the first time. Westerly winds, pulling in a heavy saltiness from the distant sea to their east. Dany took his hand and smiled as the sun’s rays warmed them.

“We’re going to the Dragonpit,” she told him.

“The Dragonpit?”

Rhaegar nodded, rubbed his hands together, then stepped away from them. “It’s on my hill, Rhaenys’s. It’s more of an open air colosseum than a pit honestly. Our family’s used it to teach the younger dragons how to control themselves, their fire and wings. A practice yard, if you will. We’ll need to fly you over there.”

“I’ll take him.” Dany looked shocked by her own words; Rhaegar, too. She stood taller then, her chin tilted upward. “Unless you’d rather…”

“Give it a try.” Rhaegar smiled despite the hurt and uncertainty in his dark eyes.

Jon couldn’t say what secret underlay their words, but his father stepped to the balcony’s short balustrade, took a running leap and transformed before their eyes. Great leathery jade wings cast a huge shadow over the balcony, Jon’s vision turning to a green gloom as a melodious roar echoed over the bay. His chest tightened at the wavering, familiar notes. Calling to him, even then, welcoming him. Rhaegar flapped high above them, then hovered to watch the balcony.

“Stand back a bit,” Dany told him. “My dragon skin’s as big as Uncle Aemon’s whole balcony now.”

Jon hurried back into the dimness of the dining room, watching his lover. His  _ lover _ . 

His spikes preened at the thought, petting at the air and her lemony scent still damp on his skin.

Dany took her time, let the wind gust at her sheer, silky dress, its pale fabrics fluttering around her like wisps of clouds. She smiled at him over her shoulder, then turned into the wind. All at once, her body seemed to explode. Wings as big as mammoths darkened the sky to midnight. Her torso swelled to a hard, spiky onyx boulder, and her neck lengthened to the height of a tower. Like Rhaegar, Dany let out a shriek, but its sound was joyous to Jon’s ears. As familiar as the sight of his own face in a looking glass.

She shifted her bulk carefully, near twice the size of her brother. Jon stepped back outside, watching her in awe. 

“You’re incredible, Dany. Truly.”

Her great horned head lowered to his, sharp teeth the size of swords. She cooed at him, a soft trill of adoration. Jon rested a shaky hand on her snout as her violet eyes blinked softly, the pupils growing fat. Dany curled her wing towards him, the entire leathery expanse trembling as her wing claw scraped the stone.

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

Asking was instinctual, though Jon couldn’t explain why. Mounting a dragon’s back— _ another _ dragon, he reminded himself—was wrong. Not his place, somehow, not right now. Not allowed yet, not until…

Until what?

Jon shook himself, focused on Dany’s bright violet eyes instead. The trust and hope and edge of uncertainty. She nodded her great head, but Jon still lingered on the ground. He rubbed her snout, every tiny, ruby spike growing in around her eyes, then caressed one of her massive crimson horns when she tilted her head toward him. All the while, her purrs shook the stone balcony, made Jon’s legs vibrate where he stood. Dany hunkered down lower, her belly dropping to the stone until her extended wing was spread flat beside him.

“I’m going to climb on your back now, okay?”

Dany preened at him, soft and happy. She blinked her eyes open to watch him through her huge pupils. Jon stared at her wing for a long minute, from the leathery skin between the bones, to the thicker arm at the front. He settled for walking up that, careful not to put pressure on the stretches of only skin. From her back, Jon gazed down at the balcony a dozen feet below and tried to figure out where to sit. He was suddenly quite glad he’d let Dany talk him into leaving his pelt back in their bedchamber. Having it catch the wind and disappear mid-flight would be disastrous.

“Where’s a good spot?”

Dany’s massive torso shifted beneath his feet and almost sent Jon tumbled back to the stone balcony. In front of him, her largest spikes tilted suggestively. Jon took her meaning and made his way to that spot, seating himself awkwardly with the largest at his back, and the next two biggest before him. He grasped each in a hand, and tensed his legs. His breeches were boiling, her flesh like sitting over a hot stove. 

She rose into the air at once, singing a lovely tune that made Jon’s heart feel like it was trying to beat through his ribs. Rhaegar led the way, circling their home with Dany a few paces behind. Jon clutched her boiling flesh, his stomach back on the ground. Wind slapped his face, made his curls a wild mess, and tried to unseat him. Fear gripped him for a few seconds as they ascended into the clear, pale sky.

But Dany’s song was like a blessing. Soothing and safe, a protection from every fearful thought racing through his mind. Jon adjusted his grip and his seating, then lifted his head to look at the land. Far below, three great hills stood together in a triangle, little grassy valleys marking the spaces between. Each hill was different, outfitted with unique turrets and towers and balconies. Rhaegar made for the second largest, where a towering colosseum covered the hill’s crown.

Dany continued to sing, a joyous flush of delight sparking through Jon from where his hands held her spikes. His own flexed in the rushing air, testing and tasting and overwhelmed by the sensations. He sat back as they descended, held tight with his knees, then let go with his hands, laughing as the air caught his arms, his spikes.

He was flying. Just as he’d always dreamed, high as the sun and the stars, where he could part the clouds, and kiss the moon.

Just as soon as the thrill started, it came to an end. Rhaegar landed and shifted, then Dany followed him down. She dropped in the colosseum’s dusty center, lowering her wing so that Jon could dismount. For an angry moment, Jon didn’t want to. He’d been in the air, soaring like he was meant to be. Returning to the ground was wrong. Dany’s purrs shook his body then, reminding him of their purpose. That someday soon he could fly on his own wings instead of nestled upon her back.

He leaned down and kissed her onyx scales. “Thank you for letting me fly, love.”

Jon met Rhaegar on the ground, Dany shifted back to her petite human skin beside him. She gave him a smile, shy but happy, as he wrapped his arm around her waist.

“How was that?”

“Wonderful. Everything I ever dreamed it would be.”

“And I didn’t burn you,” Dany said, though it seemed to be to herself.

“What? Why would you—”

“The last two men who tried to mount me… but that was against my will. I did not offer myself to them like that, did not have reason to trust them like I do you.”

“Oh.” An anxious tingle went through him at her confession. “Well, I’m glad I won’t be supper.”

Dany laughed, hugged him tight, then the instruction began. Unlike his mother’s and Uncle Ned’s lessons to himself and Robb as small boys, Rhaegar’s was much more verbal-based. He talked Jon through every stage of a dragon’s shifting, from spikes to flight, to how his human body would expand to a dragon’s. Every bit of it sounded painful, the contorting and cracking bones, the fire that would be able to sear up his throat and set the world ablaze.

“We’ll start working on your comfort with your spikes and wings,” Rhaegar told him, once the conversations were finished. “Perhaps enough practice with those will bring your fire dream out, too.”

The sun was almost at its highest point in the sky. Jon squinted up at it, sweating through his thin breeches and tunic. Not even true spring, but the south was already proving to be hotter than a northern summer. His body wasn’t fond of it.

For the rest of their daylight, Jon was stripped of his shirt and run through a number of exercises. Extending his spikes, all at once, then individually, then in pairs or sets, getting familiar with their sensations and the movements. Trying to turn their movements into as much of a reflex as his direwolf skin was to him. His skin was raw by the time they moved on to his wings, but no matter how he concentrated, Jon couldn’t get them to form on his command.

Every time he focused, eyes squeezed shut, he pictured Aerion Brightflame from his father’s story. Despite the apparent Targaryen physical traits Jon had missed out on, he pictured Aerion looking much like himself. Thin and dark of hair and eye. His skin smoking, every breath like sparks from a fire, and then his dark eyes going from red to orange to white, bursting into flames, his dragon exploding from his insides.

“Sorry,” he muttered, dropping to the dusty ground as the sunlight faded below the colosseum’s high, arched walls. Jon was drenched in sweat, panting for breath. “Maybe they’re… maybe I’m just like Aerion after all.”

“No.” Rhaegar’s voice was like a command, sharp and stern. Every failed minute that passed only made him more anxious. “You will not end up like Aerion. I will _ not  _ allow it. Not for my son, not when I’ve only just gotten you in my life.”

Jon bristled at his father’s tone. His spikes poked free and expanded. Already, they’d grown some. No longer thin and sharp like pine needles, but wider, like serrated leaves. Rhaegar paced before him and Dany, little clouds of dirt kicking up around his feet.

“You don’t get to decide that. If I am, then I am. We can’t change it at this point.”

“You’re not, Jon. We won’t allow you to—”

Jon’s scent flooded the open space, cresting over them all like a tsunami. Weirwood sap, flaming ash hot enough to melt skin. He grit his teeth at his father’s demands, at the orders being placed on  _ him _ . But when he opened his mouth to snap, Jon cried out in surprised pain. His arms cracked, bones lengthening, his wrists jerking outward, fingers growing and growing and  _ growing _ . Each jolt was uneven and sporadic, not smooth like the other dragons. Every inch of his skin felt like hot, liquidy butter as it seemed to drip away from his arms to fill in his wing then hardened to scales, steaming. Once everything settled, two pale, leathery wings sprouted from his shoulders. Beneath the icy scales, his bones were black.

“Fuck, okay, easy, Jon. Stay calm.”

Jon gave a squawk of fear, tried to stand and instead tumbled over without his arms to use. He rolled right onto his new wing joints which only served to cause more harm. Rhaegar tried to get near him, but Jon kicked and cried out, flapping up great swirls of dirt when he tried to push his father aside.

“Don’t—I can’t I can’t I—”

Dany’s hand caught one of his wing claws. At once, his entire body loosened as if he’d just made it through a painful muscle spasm. Her hands rubbed his claw—his  _ thumb _ —then carefully, slowly, worked over his wing arm, then up and down the leathery expanses between his fingers. Rhaegar sat back then, watching, his voice singing out to them as Dany soothed him. She kissed his wing claw, then his scaly, white arm, and then his shoulder. When she reached his face, she beamed and kissed him on his lips, too.

“You’re beautiful, Jon.” Dany’s thumbs brushed his cheeks. “And I think your wings are bigger than before. Just relax, okay? So Rhaegar can measure them. We can keep track to make sure everything’s still growing. They’re a part of you. Just like Ghost.”

_ Just like Ghost. _

Just thinking of his direwolf skin made his chest ache, his eyes burn with the sudden, unquenchable need to shift and curl up in a pile of furry bodies. But his Stark family was hundreds of miles away. Even his pelt wasn’t close enough to bury his nose in.

Dany straddled his lap, hugging his neck and pressing his face into her chest. Jon nuzzled her, felt her purrs rumbled through her chest, and lost himself in the tender vibrations and soft trills. Rhaegar measured each wing at different angles, then joined them in their comforting purrs.

“You did great, son. Marvelous. Now, we need to get you to shift back. Hopefully. Just relax and think of how your human arms feel.”

Jon struggled with it again. Walls of fire kept appearing behind his eyes, some white, some black, but most were an eerie, terrible green from the Haunted Forest. He flinched as Dany rubbed his scalp.

“Shh, just relax, focus on this.”

Her fingers found his frill, delicate and loving as she caressed its shallow grooves and the steadily growing swoops between the spiny points. Jon melted into her touch, listened to the deep vibrations of her purrs curling around her chest and up her throat to rest against his cheek. To the wonderful, strong beat of her heart. He followed her lead, joining their song.

Slowly, his arms contorted and shrunk. The transformation wasn’t as sudden nor as painful as the last two. He still had no control over it, but not being in agony as his bone re-organized themselves was a nice change. 

“Fantastic,” Rhaegar said, his hand squeezing Jon’s upper arm. “You’ll get the hang of it. Hell, that’s better than Dany’s first day.”

“I was also  _ four _ .” She scoffed, then laughed when Jon smiled against her neck. “Don’t you smile, Jon Targaryen. I was an amazing little dragon, whatever Rhaegar says.”

Dany smacked his shoulder when he snickered.

After finding his tunic amongst the dust, Rhaegar and Dany shifted once more and carried him back to Uncle Aemon’s hill. Visenya’s Hill was its true name for their ancestor who had discovered it centuries ago. As Jon ate everything in sight once more, his family—his  _ dragon _ family—talked about their history. Of Aegon and Rhaenys and Visenya making their home right here in these hills. Of the many who had come after, from Jaehaerys and Alysanne to Aerion Brightflame and Baelor. 

Jon couldn’t keep so many new names sorted in his mind. Learning the Starks’ history as a boy had been simple. He’d grown up on the stories and the names, had walked the family crypts with his mother and grandmother and uncles times beyond count. Targaryen history was vastly different. Not thousands and thousands of years in this homeland, but scattered across an enormous world Jon had never thought to discover.

“So, we’ve only been here, in Westeros, for a few centuries?”

“Yes, we were in Valyria before that, and then farther east before that,” Uncle Aemon said. “If our surviving records are correct, our ancestors hail from the Great Empire of the Dawn.”

Every word was a lot to take in. Jon finished his last plate of roasted meats, his tummy plump and full. His eyes drooped as he dropped the cracked, charred bone onto his plate. He’d sucked the marrow right out of it. The rest of his family was watching his devouring endeavor, looking amused.

“What?”

“You eat worse than your father and Dany combined.” Rhaella smiled fondly at him, reached over to give one of his stray curls a tug. “How did today go?”

“Spikes went great,” Rhaegar told her. “His wings… we’ll need to work more on those. Jon did get them free, at least, so I could measure them. I’ll transcribe the dimensions to our records tonight, Uncle Aemon.”

Their wisen old uncle nodded, his eyes shut. Like Jon, he seemed ready for a nice long nap. It was only when Jon slumped forward on the table that the conversation came to a halt. His father and grandmother said their goodnights, led Uncle Aemon to his own chambers deeper in the hill. Dany followed Jon back to his. The room had aired out a little, their scents softer on the air, the musk of their claiming dulled. 

His pelt was spread out over the bed. Jon rushed to it, wrapped it tight around his torso, his spikes sinking into his skin. He took a deep sniff of his pack’s woody smell, of pines and sentinels and warm stews in Winterfell’s hall, of the earthy warmth of the crypts and the bloodiness of the weirwood’s sap running beneath the ground.

Before he could think on it, Jon shifted to Ghost. Dany laughed at him as she stripped her clothes off, then climbed under the blankets and furs on the bed.

“You’re a silly wolf.”

Jon raised his head in a silent howl, tail thumping the floor. Her scent was even stronger in his direwolf skin, a roaring fire he wished to bask in. Dany patted the bed beside her.

“Come on, love.”

He hopped up beside her, rolled onto his back, wriggling around happily, spreading his scent all over the bed. Dany sang softly to him, rubbing his shaggy belly and chest and neck. Jon licked her face, a wet rasp on her soft skin. She giggled and wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his shaggy neck.

“My sweet white wolf,” Dany whispered. “You’re mine, no matter what the future brings us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I leave you!
> 
> As stated in the notes at the end of the previous chapter, we're going to be skipping a week. So no update next week, sorry, kids. I'm running out of already written story to post. Instead, Embers will (hopefully) be updated next Tuesday. I'm considering rotating between the two until this one is finished, but we'll see. Depends on how quick I can get the writing done and up to par.
> 
> So, next update will be February 5th! I'll have a better idea of the schedule by then.
> 
> Until then, cheers!


	9. Metamorphosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tuesday, Tuesday, TUESDAY!!!
> 
> And a snowy Tuesday in my part of the world :D
> 
> This chapter's a long one. Like 9000 words or something crazy.
> 
> Enjoy!

Weeks passed in a mellow rhythm as spring blossomed on their hills. Jon’s practices with his father and Dany continued, his spikes becoming a natural occurrence as they threaded through his skin. Yet his wings remained stubborn. After five continuous weeks, Jon could unfold them at will, though his arms still felt like they were splintering every time they grew. But they did grow, by inches and then several feet in every direction. 

His Targaryen family was relieved at his measurements’ increases, but still worried at his stagnation in other areas.

Rhaegar put up a good front of taking it all in stride, but Jon could feel his guilt, like a heavy musk in the air, every time they practiced. On the days when Dany flew and hunted alone, Jon joined his father in his halls instead. Not atop Rhaenys’s Hill in the Dragonpit, but beneath its earthen crust, down in what Jon could only call a hive. Unlike the other two hills, Rhaenys’s had been hollowed out and left with a hundred different openings like the colosseum above. Inside, it was warm and earthy, smelled of deep, ancient soil and layers of granite, silt, and porous rock. Its very design magnified every sound. From Jon’s footsteps to their quiet conversations, the hill’s acoustics were pristine. 

“To others, our dragon voices are roars. They fill humans and shifters alike with fear and dread, but not to our ears,” Rhaegar explained as they wandered the curved halls that made a perimeter around the empty center. Eventually, they followed the sloping halls to the bottom. It was here his father liked to rest and compose, where his song chimed like crystals.

“We sing. As dragons and humans, in harmonies and melodies few others can stand. It was my song that drew your mother to seek me out.” Rhaegar swallowed, another heaving weight of guilt thickening the air. “She heard me singing—as a human, of course—and followed me. And then… well, we made you. Not long after.”

His father blushed, and his shyness about the matter surprised Jon. He and Dany didn’t mate in the open by any means, but neither were they quiet or bashful about the fact. All three of his Targaryen relatives had taken their coupling in stride. Something about having the pair of them laughing and in love had stirred new life into Jon’s dragon relatives.

“Do you love her still?” 

Rhaegar took a long time to answer as he settled on the worn stone floor. “I never let her go,” he said eventually. Then he cleared his throat. “Come here, son. I’ll teach you our songs, perhaps that will help you.”

“But I can’t shift yet,” Jon said, a nervous tick going in his throat. “How can I—”

“Your mother once sang beside me, in her direwolf form.”

Jon clutched his shaggy pelt around his shoulders. This far south, with summer edging into the air, it was far too warm for it, but whenever he wasn’t practicing or flying with Dany, Jon kept it close. Shame tugged at his belly at the hopeful look his father gave him.

“I can’t.” 

He ducked his head, avoided his father’s hurt eyes. Every day spent together, made Jon see more of himself in those dark indigo eyes. A different color, but that very same darkness—an unnameable sadness that lived in his very skin. 

“I can’t howl,” he admitted. “My first true winter, when I was supposed to shift and remain a wolf with the others, I couldn’t do it. I panicked and just howled and howled until my voice… it’s gone.”

Rhaegar considered him, then patted the floor beside him. “Maybe that’s part of your dragon skin problem. Singing is how we bond, as family and mates. It’s a part of us, just like your pelt is a part of you. Come on, son.”

He patted the ground again, and Jon dropped down beside him. When Rhaegar swelled into his jade scales, Jon followed, slipping into his direwolf form. 

Under his father’s wing, tucked against his molten scales, Jon listened. To the massive lungs swelling with air and the soaring melodies, every crescendo rising inside him, like a second heartbeat coming alive in his throat. His father’s song echoed through the halls, rattling the stone, then easing it back into place. Jon lifted his snout in answer, offering his own silent howl. He coughed then, a puff of smoke filling the air, his throat raw and burning. Rhaegar’s purrs joined his song, his gleaming bronze eyes watchful.

Near an hour passed before anything changed. His throat was scraped raw from his attempts, like a sheet of gritty sand was being rubbed over his lungs and neck. Jon tried once more under his father’s patient gaze, and slowly, as the song grew in intensity, a soft, mournful howl left him. Hoarse and wavering, but a wolf all the same. His tail thumped against his father’s wing as the afternoon wore on, his voice growing stronger, but still scratchy with years of disuse.

Every other afternoon they sang together. Each time, Jon’s voice improved, his howl following the ebb and flow of his father’s song. By week’s end, they sat together in the colosseum, facing north, howling and singing and hoping somewhere far away, beyond the forests and rivers and moors, that Lyanna could hear them.

But even with his voice regaining use, Jon’s dragon skin stayed stubborn. His wings and serrated spikes continued to grow, but little else changed. In his dreams, Jon found himself trapped in a pentagon of fire, each wall of flame its own unique color. Orange with veins of green; bright, glowing amber; black with plumes of crimson; burning yellow blazing like sunlight on gold; and the worst—a wild, destructive green. One for each of his dragon kin, he realized, when he told Dany of his dreams one night, curled up in her arms. Dragonflames of their own individual colorings, but not one that was his own. 

“You’ll have your fire dream soon,” Rhaella told him every evening when he and Dany flew to her balcony on the Red Tower for supper. They’d taken to Dany’s old routine since his arrival. Breaking their fasts with Uncle Aemon, spending midday with his father, and then the evenings with Rhaella. “Just be patient, Jon. Everything happens in its own time and way. Perhaps in the summer. Most dragons have theirs then. All of us did.”

But summer felt so far away, more dangerous than the puffs of smoke that still clogged Jon’s lungs and woke him from his confusing dreams. Summer was not his time. Winter was the time for wolves, for his pack and himself. But dragons ruled the summer, he’d learned in his long talks with Uncle Aemon and his well of knowledge. Dragons were fire made flesh. Heat and scorching fire, like a blazing comet descending on the world.

“You are both at once, Jon, a far more complicated predicament than ours.” 

Uncle Aemon lived through touch, always with a hand resting on Jon’s growing spikes or his forearm. At first, Jon had shied away from it, but by mid-spring he basked in his old uncle’s comfort, in the sensation of sharing the most abstract of feelings and thoughts through skin.

“Can the two even exist as one?”

“Are you not sitting beside me as proof?” Uncle Aemon laughed, patted Jon’s arm. “Winter and summer in one human skin, though you have two others that allow you to choose which to walk in. How are your headaches faring?”

“About the same.” Ever since Jon had accepted his spikes in their entirety, dull throbs pulsed behind his eyes at random. Sometimes during the middle of the day, or waking him late at night with Dany pliant and warm against his side. “My temples are sore.”

Uncle Aemon pressed his fingertips to those spots until Jon winced. “A good sign, no matter the discomfort right now. I think you’ll find your moment soon. In the between seasons. Spring, we can hope, or in the autumn as the green world turns to flame and then snowy dust.”

His assumptions made sense in a strange sort of way. Jon had learned quickly—his stubbornly absent dragon skin aside—that he was odd even here among the last dragons. Welcomed, of course, just as his pack in the north loved him, but still different. Dragons were all born in the summer, just as they were conceived, when the world was robust and warm and full of fire and life. He’d come squalling into the world in late spring instead. Almost a week prior to the summer solstice, the very solstice on which Dany had been born. His father, grandmother, and uncle had been born in the two weeks that followed many years before.

“Don’t worry so much on that,” his father said, when Jon had confessed his concerns on the difference his birth time might make. That he may have the parts of a dragon tucked under his skin, but none of the fire. “You’re a halfer, Jon, as you called it. A dragon growing in a dragon’s womb takes the full year, but a dragon growing in another’s body doesn’t necessarily follow the same rules. You’ll have your time soon, I promise.”

But nobody’s promise except Dany’s resonated with Jon. 

“We’ll have each other, always,” she said as they snuggled in the dawn light. It was three weeks before the summer solstice arrived, and only a fortnight before his seventeenth nameday. “You and me, the last dragons the world will ever see.”

Jon cuddled into her as he always did, nipped her bare breast then her spiked shoulder. He kept wanting to answer her, to assure her they would not be the last, but the words stuck in his throat. Until he was able to transform, he could not conceive a child. Even then, the process was elaborate, according to his elders. Days long hunting for the perfect beast to roast for his hopeful mate, followed by a full day of dancing and singing and mating on the charred ground they’d chosen and marked. Afterward, he would still be lost in a brutal test of endurance to keep Dany safe while she slept her exhaustion away. To watch over her.

_ While our babe takes root in her belly. _

Jon’s purr deepened in delighted satisfaction at the thought. Of mating with Dany, of claiming her entirely, of bonding himself to her life for all of his.

“What are you thinking about?” she mumbled as pale strands of gray light spread across the room. “Or are you just hoping your cock’s done sleeping and ready for another round?”

He chuckled, nuzzled at her throat. “Just us, years from now, soaring across the skies together. Visiting my mother.”

Just mentioning her made Jon’s chest ache. He’d not seen his pack in almost six moons, had left the north within days of his first, failed shifting of his spikes. He wondered what had changed at Winterfell. If Sansa was taller than him and Robb now. If Arya’s direwolf name had finally been given. If Bran was growing into his wobbly legs and if Rickon had fully learned the pack’s howl. If his new niece had arrived, pink-cheeked and auburn-haired, ready to howl with them all.

If Mama wished he was still beside her. Or if Nana Lyarra feared he’d never return to take his place as the pack’s future alpha.

With Dany, he hoped. 

Dragons didn’t have the same pack hierarchies as wolves did. In general, Jon had figured out that all dragons were dominant to other creatures while in their scales. Once they were grown, they tended to spread out on their own. Only being the last of their kind, amongst these hills of isolation, had kept the last Targaryens from separating. Such was less true in their human skins, but Dany was the same in both. Commanding, but gentle. A kind heart and a forceful, fiery nature. An alpha like himself. His chosen mate for the rest of his life, if she agreed when that day came.

“You miss her,” Dany said, turning in his arms. She dragged her teeth lightly over his bearded jaw, nibbling up to his lips for a soft kiss. “I hope I’ll get to meet all of them, some day.”

“Really?” He blurted the word out in his shock, then ducked his gaze. “Sorry, it’s just… Ygritte never wanted to go south. Not for anything.”

“Daario wasn’t exactly the kind of man I’d think to bring home either,” Dany reminded him. They’d had that discussion several weeks before, and in more detail since. “I want to meet the Starks, your pack, if you’ll let me.”

“Yes.” Jon gulped down some of his eagerness, but his cock hid nothing. It began to harden against her belly, still slick from her cunt not even an hour before. “Gods, yes, I’d  _ love _ to bring you north to meet them. To… so Mama can be there when we… when I…”

“To meet our little dragon-wolves when we decide to make a few?”

Jon flushed, caught. If Dany minded his presumptiveness, she didn’t show it. Instead she pressed her cheek to Jon’s neck and kissed his pulse.

“You don’t have to hide that want from me, Jon. I hope for the same, even if we have to wait another year, or two. However long it takes until we’re ready.”

“Do you think they’ll be both, like me?” 

The question had plagued him ever since his arrival. With every story and tale and new nugget of information, and his own problems with his dragon skin, he feared his seed taking root all the more. What if being both  _ was _ the problem? What if dragons were just too different from the rest, so strange to human skin that they could not share with a third? Would he someday have to choose between the two, if he survived that long?

“I hope so.” Dany’s sleepy yawn was moist on his neck. “Just imagine it, a sweet babe with dark curly hair shifting into a snuggly little pup. Then a few years on, growing his tiny spikes and wings. He’ll have you to teach him his direwolf skin, and both of us to help him with his wings.”

“Or her.” 

Against his neck, Jon felt her smile. 

“Yes, or her. Maybe a few of each.” Dany reached down between their bodies, her soft fingers curling around his cock. “You are insatiable.”

“I like to keep in practice.”

“Is that it?” She laughed, stretched, then began to stroke him. “Well, let’s see what you’ve learned so far.”

As Dany tried to push him onto his back, Jon grasped her waist and flipped her onto her belly. She gave a little shriek, smiling and giggling, as he crouched over her. Jon pressed his cock against her perky ass, used his weight to hold her down into the mattress. Beneath him, her back was covered in her crimson spikes. Most were small, not bigger than his thumb, but the closer they grew to her spine the larger they became. One for every knot of human bone, the biggest in the middle of her back, the next two largest over each lung. She had two neck frills unlike himself, smaller and softer, diverging from the base of her neck and disappearing into her silver-gold braids.

Jon nuzzled the soft skin between her frills, scraped his teeth over one and then the other. Dany squirmed beneath him, fingers clawing at the sheets. He braced himself with his knees, capturing Dany’s legs between his thighs, his cock jutting against the curve of her ass.

“Any requests, love?”

“To not be tease.” Her tone said otherwise. To prove her point, Dany’s hand reached back and scratched his hip, fumbling for his cock. “Fuck me into the bed again.”

“Mmm, in a bit.” Jon sucked her neck, then down her shoulder blade between her spikes. When her hand tried to scratch at him again, Jon caught her wrist and pinned first one and then the other hand above her head. “If you’re going to offer your pretty little ass, then I’m going to enjoy it as I see fit.”

“ _ Jon _ .”

She keened beneath him, arching back against his hard cock. Jon groaned as she rocked herself back against him, then caught her largest spike to hold her in place.

“Patience, love. You’ll have your chance to scream soon enough.”

He took his time, as Dany sighed and wiggled and tried to press herself back against his cock. Jon kept his hips away from hers. Instead he mapped out her back, sucking and biting the patches of soft skin between her spikes, re-making the fading little bruises his mouth had left over the last few months. The more time he took, the more ferocious Dany’s movements became. He thrilled in her impatience and eagerness, kept her held tight at her wrists and with his strong thighs around hers.

“You are terrible to me,” Dany panted, spikes flexing at the air. Her face was flushed a rosy pink as she twisted to glance back at him. “Why can’t I just enjoy your pretty cock only?”

“Would you really enjoy it as much if I didn’t make you crave it like this?”

Her answer was a grateful moan as Jon cupped her pussy, slipping his thumb into her slick folds as his fingers pinched her stiff nub. Dany’s hips pushed back onto his thumb, trying to fuck herself as best she could while restrained.

“Needy little dragon. So hungry for my cock.”

“Stretch me more,” Dany muttered, as her pussy squeezed around his thumb. “ _ Now _ .”

“So demanding.” His laugh brushed over her spikes and the huff of breath finally made them sink back into her skin. As always, her horns remained. He’d learned she hated to be entirely without at least one part of her dragon skin visible. Felt too confined in her softer human flesh. “You promise to be a good girl? To come on my cock until you can’t move or think?”

“Please, yes. Fuck me hard, Jon.”

“Keep your hands up here,” Jon told her, guiding each to grasp the pillows. “No touching.”

Once she obeyed, Jon released her wrists. Her skin prickled to gooseflesh as he dragged his fingernails up and down her back. He rubbed one ass cheek, then the other, ending the caress with a sharp slap. The sound echoed around the room, Dany’s delighted cry a second behind. Her muscles tightened around his thumb, her cunt slick and plump. 

“Hmm, you’re so wet.” 

He bent his head and bit each of her cheeks, soothed the blooming red mark from his slap with a handful of kisses. Then he pulled his thumb from her depths, smiling at her whine of protest, lined his cock up, and thrust home. Her cunt clenched around him like a vice. Dany moaned, her breath catching and fingers digging into the pillow. Jon’s groan vibrated deep in his chest as her wet heat squeezed his cock.

Jon dragged her hips higher, to her favorite angle, halfway to her knees, but still trapped beneath him with her thighs pressed together. He had a perfect view of her cunt spread around his cock, shiny and red, pulsing deep. His hips nudged forward, pressing the last inch in, forcing a gasp from Dany and a grunt of pleasure from him as his cock pushed at her womb.

“Hard,” she demanded. “I want to feel you in my bones.”

He pulled out slowly, made her feel the stretch, watched his cock reappear, glistening with her arousal and traces of his seed from the night before. Then he snapped forward, hands clamped to her hips, holding her on him. Jon set a relentless pace, a brutal force as their skin slapped together and Dany’s entire body jerked up the bed. She pushed back with her hands to meet him, her cries wild and throaty. Dany kept her back arched, pressed her chest and face to the bed. 

“Yes, yes, just like that.”

Jon tilted her hips a little higher as her tightness tried to keep him deep, nestled right where she wanted him most. She shrieked below him, an almost primal sound, hungry and lustful, as her pussy tightened, channel plump and needy. With a whimper, Dany’s entire body went taut. He fucked her harder, groaning as her pussy squeezed around him, ripples of pleasure breaking over her in a great roar. Her voice was hoarse as she called out his name, moaning and jerking on the bed.

He buried himself to the hilt as she came, shut his eyes tight against the bliss of her cunt’s release around his cock. She sagged into the bed after several long moments, trembling and murmuring. Jon leaned over her, careful of her back in case her spikes made a sudden reappearance.

“Love it when you come around my cock like that,” Jon whispered, his breathing heavy as he kissed up her neck and sucked at her earlobe. “My wild little dragon.”

She purred encouragingly at his words, and Jon slowed his pace as he began to move again, easing her into a steady, gentler rhythm. Her muscles stayed tight around him, begging to be stretched further. With her first backwards push against him, Jon drove his hips into her hard. She gurgled at the force, gave a happy wail as he resumed his original merciless thrusts. Her ass shook as his hips met the flesh, skin glowing an exquisite ruby from their mating. Jon wrapped his hands into her hair to hold Dany steady. Her feet squirmed against his calves as he wrapped his free arm around her hips and pressed his fingers into her silky curls, searching for her clit. She canted her hips when he found it, crying out in a towering crescendo as she came again.

Jon fucked her through it, sweat dripping from his chest and brow. His balls drew up tight, cock throbbing as her cunt rippled around him. A wave of heat and dizziness overcame him then, as he pounded her hips into the bed. With a wavering shout, Jon came, too, following her into an oblivion of bliss and delirious pleasure. Her pussy held him tight, squeezing as he pulsed inside her, filling her with his seed until Jon could see trails of it dripping onto the bed from where they were joined. They both shuddered when he withdrew, crumbling to the bed in a sweaty, sated heap. 

Jon passed out then, waking later with bright sunlight streaming in through the curtains. Dany was seated on the open window’s ledge, naked, wiping her thighs and pussy with a damp cloth.

“You made a lovely mess of me, Jon Targaryen.”

She flashed him a wicked little smile, eyes bright with amusement. Jon sat up, groaning as his bones popped. He found his pelt buried under their mussed up pillows, wrapped it around himself and joined her on the windowsill. Midday warmth drifted in through the open window, a hot breeze on his cheeks. Wafts of burning sand and distant, humid storms tickled his nose. Summer’s edge was upon the wind, creeping closer.

“Let’s go flying today,” Dany said, once she was done cleaning herself up. She brushed her fingers over his shaggy pelt. “Just you and me again, over the bay, to that little beach I showed you.”

“Aye, that’d be nice.” Jon tried to playfully bite her hand when she tugged at a few strands of his fur. “So long as you don’t bury me in the mud again.”

“You asked for it.”

“I did not, Daenerys Targaryen.” 

Before Dany could protest, Jon snatched her up, lifted her into his lap to join him in the warm embrace of his pelt. He folded the soft fur around them both, her back pressed to his chest, vibrating with her joyous purr, full of contentment and love. Jon preened at the sound, a great coo rolling up his throat when she reached back and scratched at his scalp and frill.

“Soon, we’ll be able to fly over the bay together,” Dany assured him. “East or west, north or south. We can find the cliff we’ve both dreamed about, and stay there for as long as we want.”

Their cliff. On a great, volcanic island, somewhere lost in the salt stench of the sea. They’d both dreamt of its homeliness, but in contrasting ways. Dany’s dreams were all of night, of a deep darkness as they held each other in their soft human flesh. For Jon, their cliff was bright, marked by strong winds as a hot sun beat down on their scales. Always as dragons, together and happier than he’d ever thought he’d be capable.

But now, with Dany truly beside him, loving him just as he adored her, that happiness didn’t feel quite so far off anymore.

They bathed in the shallow pool in the lower catacombs of Visenya’s Hill. The journey down to it was quite long and wobbly, navigating worn, steep stone stairways and dark passages. Uncle Aemon never ventured so far down anymore, stayed safe in his towers of books and scrolls, but Dany loved the little bathing pools in the steaming belly of Visenya’s Hill. She’d shown him their steaming pits as soon as she could. After they cleaned each other, and fucked once more on the damp floor beside the pool, Jon and Dany ate and then took to the skies. As had become their custom, Jon seated himself upon her great onyx scales, slotted tight between her largest spikes. 

“Make for the sky,” Jon murmured, kissing each of the spikes he held in his hands. “Let us be only the wind.”

Dany screeched, warbling her song like a balm in his skin. She launched them into the clouds, weaving across the horizon, chasing the sun as it began its slow descent to the western shores. They danced and twirled for hours, Jon clinging to her back, his legs squeezing and releasing in time with her movements. Everyday they flew together now, in the hopes that enjoying flight would stir his fire dream’s arrival in a great plume of flame.

Hours later, Dany streaked for the earth, let her wing tips skim the bay as she made for the western shore. They landed in her favorite beach of soft mud. Jon climbed down, wincing at his stiff joints, and the aching muscles in his back. His head throbbed, too, a deep, hollowing pulse at each of his temples.

“Don’t splatter me with your mud bath,” he told Dany, but she was already rolling about on the muddy shore, coating her legs and torso, and then spreading her wings out and dragging them along the slick ground. Her happy shrieks only made his headache worse.

Jon went to the tide’s distant edge, washed the sweat from his arms with the chilly, salty water, then headed up the beach to the rocky outcroppings beyond the squelching mud. He sat down hard, cradling his head in his hands. A pounding like his own heartbeat chased itself back and forth behind his eyes, slamming from one temple to the other.

“Jon?”

Dany had shrunk back to her petite human skin, covered in great, wet swathes of red-brown mud. She pulled her dress up as she raced toward him, but it wasn’t worry or fear on her face. Instead, she beamed as Jon slumped onto his side. Everything went hot then, like the sun had descended from the patchy clouds to meld to his skin. His eyelids grew heavy, the need to sleep like a suffocating blanket pulled up over his head.

“Dany, what—” He gurgled as the pounding in his temples increased. His vision wavered like steam evaporating from the ground. “It’s so hot. I don’t—”

“Shh, relax, love.” Dany lay down beside him, stroked his cheek with fingertips like hot coals. “Don’t fight it. Let it lull you to sleep. I’ll be right here, waiting.”

With his head cradled against her chest, Jon gave into the sleepy warmth churning through him. He shut his eyes and woke to a different world. Jon felt like he was floating, staring out at a fiery horizon as a huge sun set into the sea. It took several blinks for him to gather his wits, to notice the child-like voices behind him.

“No, like this. You gotta pack all the furs in around you, like a big wolf pile.”

“Oh, so this way?”

“Perfect!”

He was on a balcony. A great sea stretched far below, so distant the waves were little more than a vibration to his ears.  _ The Red Tower _ . His grandmother’s home. Jon turned to the open doors, but his grandmother was nowhere in sight. Instead, a young boy and girl were running back and forth in the growing dark, dragging blankets and furs onto the balcony. They’d set up a nest-like fort in the corner between the tower’s wall and the balcony’s balustrade. Neither of them gave any indication that they could see him.

“There, now we can have the best snuggles ever.”

Jon squinted, then took a step back in surprise.

The boy was him. Tiny and thin, no older than five, with a bright smile and a little white pelt pulled over his head like a hood. He climbed into the heap of furs and the little girl joined him. Jon recognized her, too, though he’d never known her so young.

_ Dany _ .

She giggled and curled up in the big fur pile, tucked against his younger self’s side. Together, they gazed up at the indigo sky. Pricks of light had begun to appear as the sun dipped below the horizon.

“Is it here yet?”

“No, but I see a bear,” little Jon said, pointing skyward. “See it? That’s his big belly, and then his head and ears.”

He traced his finger in the air, Dany’s head resting on his shoulder, tongue poking out as she squinted at his invisible lines. She didn’t haven’t horns, not even the soft, pale nubs that had first grown. This was Dany as she’d been before her fire dream. Jon watched the two children for a time, his skin boiling, his mind confused. Sweat drenched his clothes, seemed to evaporate off his skin as quick as it formed.

_ Why am I here? This isn’t real. Dany and I never knew each other this young. _

His younger self and little Dany giggled and continued to name the stars, made up their own constellations, and delighted as a robust, pale moon rose into the night sky. Jon gazed at it, too, his chest full to bursting at its magnificence. When he turned back, little Jon had fallen asleep, his head lolling to the side. Dany was still awake, however. She gasped as she peered upward, sitting up as if she’d been bitten.

“It’s here! Look at it. The big fiery comet, just like we thought.”

She shook his younger self, but he slumbered on, deaf to her excitement. Little Dany untangled herself from the fur heap, and hurried to the balcony’s edge. Jon followed her gaze, his mouth flooding with hot ash. For once it didn’t choke him. A song filled his belly, shaking up his spine.

Overhead, a fiery ruby comet was streaking across the moon’s bright glow. Even from the ground, Jon felt its molten heat, hot enough to crack stone—to fracture the surface of the moon. Little Dany glanced back at his younger self, then steeled herself, and took a running leap into the abyss beyond the balcony. Jon yelped and tried to catch her, but she was too quick. Her tiny body tumbled into the deepening darkness, but no screams followed.

Jon peered below the balcony, to the grayish white caps of the bay, but it was too dark to see anything else.  _ No no no no _ .

She was gone, lost. Swallowed up by an inescapable darkness, and—

A joyful song echoed above him. He jerked upright, staring toward the sky and saw her—a little onyx dragon on her first flight. She circled the tower once, then soared into the sky, a great shadow against the swollen, bright moon. Jon watched her until she was no more than a speck in the distance, chasing the fiery comet’s tail on its way across the moon’s face.

He understood then, his temples flushing hot then cold, then hot again.

Jon turned back to the heap of furs, wondering, but found his younger self still sleeping. His steps made no sound when he approached the pile and kneeled down next to the boy he’d been.

“You slept through the first one, little wolf.” Jon reached down and tucked the furs in around the boy, adjusted Ghost’s tiny pelt so that it sat over his face just so. “But don’t you worry, we won’t miss our chance again.”

He returned to the balcony’s edge. Dany’s young dragon silhouette was gone from the sky, even her song was no more than a glowing memory etched on his skin. Jon closed his eyes, took a long, measured breath, and followed her into the dark.

Rushes of steam and whistling blackness enveloped Jon as he tumbled through the night. Nothing could stop his plummeting. His heart choked off his breath, his skin itching like the wind was trying to shred him. Bursts of others’ flames came for him: gold and green and scarlet. Even an ancient violet and a bright azure, but nothing that was his. No pelt, no spikes, no wings in sight. 

Jon almost thought it all a mistake, but Dany had made it. He trusted her above all others. 

Dany. With her black and crimson scales, her sparkling violet eyes.

Uncle Aemon’s lilac horns and flickering amber fire.

His grandmother’s ruby and gold.

And his father, of jade and bronze, with orange flames streaked with vibrant green.

Even Aerys, his lost grandfather. His warring flames spiralled before Jon, first azure then deepening to emerald.

Heat bloomed in his belly—a flash of stark white as the colors dissolved in a great spark—darting about like a hummingbird. Jon searched for it, hunted it into his chest, and then clawed it open, until an explosion of fire raced up his throat. A great roar left him, a hot-white burst of flames blinding him and then—

Jon’s wings caught the wind. He drifted for a moment, blinked in the strangely dark night. But it wasn’t so dark anymore, his eyes soaking in every fraction of light for a dozen miles around. Two flaps of his white wings, and Jon was level with the balcony once more, and then high above it. Purrs swelled in his belly, so vibrant and deep he almost lost his control, but the moon was before him, painted with the fiery comet’s crimson tail. Dany was there, swooping around it, calling for him to join her…

He woke with a heaving gasp, his body shuddering and twitching. Dany’s face shifted above him, caked in drying mud. Jon groaned, groggy and disoriented. His eyes were swollen, seemed to have ballooned past his cheekbones. Each of his temples felt wooden and strangely heavy. When he tried to lift his head, it weighed twice what it had before.

“Stay still, Jon. Just breathe.”

He coughed up a cloud of ashy smoke, felt a bubble of flame tight in his chest. “What… happened?”

Dany kissed his nose, then his cheeks, and cracked lips. “Your fire dream. You can fly now. Well, not  _ right _ now, but tomorrow probably.”

“I’ve got horns?”

She laughed, took his hands and carefully set them on the sharp horns sprouting from his temples. Jon made a face as his fingers touched them. They were much bigger than he’d been led to believe, solid like bone, but covered in what felt like wedges of uneven tree bark. Not at all like the little cartilage buds his family had described. These were full horns, jutting parallel along the side of his head, nearly as long as Dany’s.

“They’re gorgeous, Jon, scarlet like your spikes.”

“Feel like tree branches.” Jon grumbled and shut his eyes, ready to drift back to sleep. His eyes seemed to be shrinking, the pressure lessening, as Dany curled up at his side, purring and rubbing his belly. “I’m turning into a tree or a dragon?”

“A dragon, like me and the rest of us.” Her lips brushed his neck. “Your eyes feel, okay?”

He blinked sleepily, and while they still felt too large, they weren’t as bad as before.

“Swollen.”

“Your dragon eyes. Mine did the same right after my fire dream.” Jon felt her lift her head. “Yes, they’re almost normal again. They stayed the same color, though, like mine stay violet even in my dragon skin.”

“Do they usually change?”

“Mama and Uncle Aemon’s and Rhaegar’s all did. I think it’s about half and half, honestly.” She settled against him once more. “Rest for a bit, then we’ll head back home. Tomorrow, we’ll go flying. Both of us, dancing across the sky side by side.”

Jon slumped into her, let his exhaustion claim him.

 

* * *

 

Returning to the Red Tower took him and Dany the better part of the sunset. Even after dozing for several hours, Jon’s body was woozy and heavy. He couldn’t focus for very long, and kept slipping sideways on Dany’s great scaly back as she flew them around the western curve of the bay. Normally, they would fly directly across the water, but Dany had insisted it wasn’t a good idea.

“You’re too weak and tired right now,” Dany said, right before she transformed to her dragon skin. “If you fall in the bay…”

Jon agreed since he didn’t want to drown.

It was dark when they clattered onto the balcony. Rhaella awaited them, then rushed forward when she spotted Jon tottering from his perch on Dany’s back. She helped him down, but like Dany was delighted at the sight of his clunky, awkward horns.

“Oh, thank the gods.” She wrapped an arm around his waist to support him into the sitting room. “But they’re so much larger than… well, it hardly matters. Here, sit. Rest. I’ll grab you both some food. Dany—”

“I’ve got him.” 

His lover joined him on the plushy couch, got him comfortable against several pillows and covered him in furs. Only once the extra layers and heat settled around him did Jon realize he’d been shivering.

A mountainous bowl of roasted meat was set in Jon’s lap. His nostrils flared at the scent, his chest boiling to sear the meat himself, to taste charred flesh and cracked black bones on his tongue. Dany popped each succulent bite into his mouth until it was all gone. By then, Rhaella had flown off and back to spread the news. Uncle Aemon stayed behind, too tired and frail to fly in the dark, but Rhaegar rushed into the room, out of breath.

“Let me see, let me see him. Jon?” 

Jon hummed, his eyes drifting shut under his furs with Dany resting beside him. His father’s excitement couldn’t be ignored, however. Rhaegar grabbed him by the shoulders, gave him a gleeful shake.

“Your horns are here, and— _ gods _ , they’re near full-grown.” 

His father took each in hand, even as Jon snarled and growled in protest. Rhaegar tugged his head about by his horns, looking each over carefully, brushing the barky outer layer with his fingernails.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Rhaegar released his hold, fussed with tucking more furs around Jon’s chest. “Here, stay warm. Get some sleep. Tomorrow…”

“Where’s Ghost?” His voice was little more than a slur as Jon leaned into Dany’s comforting presence, his eyes drifting shut. “Want Ghost.”

Someone’s footsteps hurried off. Jon tried to sleep, but he couldn’t fully relax, not without his pack’s smell, without his own direwolf skin wrapped safe about him. He stirred a while later as his pelt’s strong ashy, weirwood scent washed over him. Several people kissed his forehead, muttered encouragements to rest and sleep.

When Jon woke again, it was daybreak. Every inch of him was heavy from sleep, his eyes gummy. He sat up to find his family sleeping in armchairs around him. Dany was curled up in a tight ball in a plushy chair next to him, his father was at his feet, dozing sitting up, even his grandmother was seated between the two, her cheek squished from her hand propping her head up. Ghost’s pelt was on top of the thick pile layered on him. Jon kicked the rest off, then sat up to wrap himself in his pack’s smell.

A wave of dizziness overtook him. His head tilting from the weight of his horns.

His  _ horns. _

Jon curled up in his pelt, took a few deep breaths to calm himself, then carefully inspected his new appendages. Each one was now harder than stone. He ran his fingers over them, parallel along his head, then swooping upward where they tapered off to little jagged points. Like the day before, their exposed layer reminded him of tree bark. And more so, he could  _ feel  _ with them. Just as his fingertips could feel their textures, his horns could sense the softness of his skin, the unique grooves in his fingerprints.

Sunlight began to creep into the room. 

Instinct drove him to the balcony to watch it rise. Warmth filled him as he stood and welcomed the ruby orb breaking over the dark, choppy bay. 

“Not thinking of taking your first flight without me, are you?”

Dany appeared at his side. She smiled and kissed him, brushed her fingertips over his horns. Jon shivered at the contact, the burst of joy he felt kindling in her skin.

“Never.” Jon wrapped her up in his pelt, his chest to her spikeless back. “Just wanted to watch the sun rise and think.”

Dany relaxed against him. “About?”

“My fire dream.  _ Our _ fire dream.”

“Ours?”

Jon nodded, rested his chin on the silver-gold braids woven on top of her head. In their first few weeks together, they’d talked quite a bit about their childhoods apart, but more than anything about Dany’s journey to finding her dragon skin. Her spikes and wings, her ashy, hacking cough that had persisted half the winter, then her excited little wings, and especially her fire dream. She’d never confirmed that had been the first dream she’d had of him, but ever since that night, Dany admitted he’d been a foundational part of her slumbering fantasies. 

“You said yours was here, on this balcony,” Jon recalled. 

“Yes, I-I did.” She almost seemed embarrassed to mention it, her fingers knotting together where they clasped his against her belly. “It was nothing extravagant or prophetic. A great harvest moon and a comet.”

“And me.” Jon buried his nose in her silky hair. “Mine was a dream of yours, I think. We were here, as children, building a fur pile like I grew up doing with my cousins. Just there.” He pointed to the corner between the tower wall and the balustrade. “I watched the sun set and the moon rise, and us, together, waiting for the comet. Only I—”

“You fell asleep,” Dany said. Her voice shook as she turned to stare up at him. Tears glistened in her eyes. “And your pelt was up like this.”

She dragged it up over his head, but with his horns free, they tented it so that his face was still visible. Jon nodded, his chest tight as tears burned his eyes, too. He couldn’t verbalize the significance of the shared fire dream—of the deeply rooted certainty that if he’d known his dragon family from birth, he and Dany would have taken to the skies together that night a dozen years ago.

“You were fearless,” Jon told her. “Scared the shit out of me, watching you just leap right off the balcony. If I hadn’t watched you go first…” 

“You’re braver than you know, Jon.”

“Not half so brave as you.”

They kissed as the first slants of sunlight glittered on the Red Tower’s high windows. Jon told her the rest of his fire dream. Of tucking his younger self in and following her into the abyss, then falling through clouds of flame in every color: from her crimson and black to that ancient violet before all had burst into a blinding white.

“Mine was like diving into a volcano’s core,” Dany told him. “Everything was black, then the world turned red and molten below me. Like it was reaching for me, and I think I must have taken it as my own somehow. When I looked up, I saw a glowing white opening, chased it like I was an eruption. The moon called me home, but not before the fire became mine.”

“I love you.”

Dany grinned, tucked her head against his neck. She kissed his pulse, rubbed her horn against his bearded jaw. “I love you, too.”

 

* * *

 

Uncle Aemon joined them for breakfast in the Red Tower. Every member of his dragon family spent half the meal touching and admiring Jon’s new horns. Rhaegar took copious notes, measuring and describing and even providing a raw sketch. Questions about his fire dream followed, from his own perspective and from Dany’s as she kept watch over him.

“For later,” he explained when Jon asked. “We each have our own pages in the family history. Describing our size and scales, coloring and markings, spikes and horns. Everything about our first transformations.”

“And has anyone else had horns that look like tree branches?”

Uncle Aemon chuckled, sipped his cup of soup. “I expect not, but before myself we’d had no record of a violet dragon either. We’re all unique to ourselves, Jon. And you are of the North as much as you are of our blood. Some difference is expected with your direwolf skin in the mix.”

“Don’t fret,” Rhaella said. She hadn’t stopped beaming since she’d woken to find him and Dany watching the sun rise on the balcony. “Your horns are lovely, Jon. They match well with your spikes, and besides that, they’re near grown. That’s more than we’d hoped for given your age.”

They finished their meal, then returned to the balcony as a family. Sunlight sparkled on the bay, gulls squawked in the distance, and warmth swooped through the morning air. Jon shut his eyes and basked in its heat, his spikes poking free to test the wind. Every light breeze brought a great shiver down his spine, left him raising himself up on his toes to kiss the sun.

“Easy, son.” His father chuckled and used both hands to push Jon down by his shoulders. “Not so fast. It’s best to transform first, get your bearings, and  _ then _ hit the skies. Make sure your wings are strong enough to support the rest of you.”

“Right.” 

Jon shook off the sudden urge to launch himself toward the clouds. Like he and Dany had in their fire dreams, throwing caution and patience to the wayside and letting instinct and self-trust decide their fates. Even so, his arms itched to shift, to engulf the balcony with his pale, translucent wings.

After a few minutes of discussion, their plan was decided. Rhaella and Rhaegar would stay on the balcony with him as he shifted for the first time, Uncle Aemon in a rocking chair by the open doors. Dany, as the largest, would transform first and take to the skies for when he took his first flight. She gave him a tender kiss before they all shuffled inside to watch. Her heaving, onyx dragon took up two-thirds of the entire balcony. With a happy trill, Dany soared into the sky, circling and singing as Jon, Rhaegar, and Rhaella stepped back into the sunlight.

Just the sight of Dany high above made Jon’s skin burn, his chest throbbing as if hot coals had been dropped into his lungs.

“Okay, this first time is all about focus,” Rhaegar explained. “And patience. Don’t force it, just relax, take your time. If you—”

But Jon could hardly hear his father’s guidance. Dany swooped closer to hover above them, her flaps gusting across the balcony, ruffling Jon’s hair and billowing his loose tunic. His insides yearned to reach her, to melt into every dream he’d ever had of her—of  _ them _ , together, loving and living and dancing. At her side was where he belonged.

“Jon? Son, are you even listening to—”

Rhaella hushed him. Her hand squeezed Jon’s upper arm, a gush of steam rising from where her skin brushed his.

“Go to her, dear. Trust yourself.”

“Mother, he hasn’t even—”

“Let him be, son. Jon knows the way.”

And he did, didn’t he? He’d risen into the sky a thousand times before in the safety of his dreams, to fly beside Dany. To adore and cherish her, to remain at her side.

Jon bolted for the balustrade even as his father’s horror struck voice rang out behind him. He breathed deep as he pushed off from the blaustrade’s worn stone, let the boiling, molten churning in his gut explode through his chest; up his neck and along his arms and down his legs. He let out a joyful cry as the wind’s current caught him, but it was not a human voice they echoed across the bay. A dragon’s melodious roar vibrated on the air as his body grew. His chest and spikes and legs swelled, his hands cracking into his now familiar pale wings.

Dany shrieked above him, swooping low in case he tumbled out of the sky. For a split-second, Jon almost thought he would. His wings unfurled well enough, but the wind buffeted him, giving him an unsteady rock, until he gave a few firm flaps and rose above the swirls that curled around the hills. Adjusting his tail was another matter, but with Dany’s onyx bulk flying protectively beneath him, Jon learned quickly to mirror her. All the while, he sang. His delighted trills echoed across the water, his heart pounding in his throat. When he laughed, a great burst of pale silver flame surrounded him, pushed back into his face by the wind.

Together, they spiraled across the sky. 

Jon flew until his scales gleamed with sweat, swollen thorny chest heaving, his wing joints cramping. He fluttered down to the Red Tower’s balcony, wobbling on the landing. His back claws slipped on the balustrade, left him flat on his belly, but nothing could temper the joy in his heart.

His father and grandmother hurried forward, laughing and crying and grinning.

“My beautiful grandson.” Rhaella gushed as she examined his wings, the scarlet frills that ran along the column of his neck. “Look at you, my perfect boy.”

Jon preened at her compliments, purring and snorting, as she stroked his snout and scratched at the curve of prickly horns above his eye. His father, too, looked him over. From wing tip to wing tip, then his thorny, bulbous chest, and finally his spiked tail.

“You’re like to make my heart stop one of these days,” his father scolded, but he scratched around Jon’s horn all the same, his indigo eyes bright with tears. “How do you feel? Don’t over do it, okay? It’s exhilarating, but you need to rest, too.”

Jon’s purr deepened, shook the entire balcony as he settled onto the warm stone. Hazy contentment filled him as Dany’s song continued to pour forth from above. Uncle Aemon approached and gave him a few pleased pats.

“Spring is your time,” his old uncle concluded. “Rest for a bit, dear boy, so we can measure again. Daenerys!”

Jon lifted his head in time to see her black scales swoop over the balcony. She landed carefully on the other end, claws clattering down. Dany shuffled along awkwardly, folding her wings until she’d arranged herself to let her wing claws touch down, too. He called to her at once, a tender trill that made his spikes shiver in the air. But the balcony didn’t allow them enough space. After a few cumbersome moments, Dany managed to extend her neck toward him. Her purr joined his as she rubbed her scaly cheek against his.

Their necks twined together as Rhaegar took more notes on his full transformation, measuring claws and spikes and his tail, too. By the time they finished, Jon was dozing, Dany’s head resting on the back of his neck while he nudged his snout against hers.

“Now, now,” Rhaella told them, tapping each of them on a massive horn. Compared to the size in his human skin, his dragon skin’s horn was the size of his whole arm. “The summer solstice isn’t for a few more weeks, you two. You can dance and nest then if you so wish.”

Dany shifted first, moving away and then shrinking back to her soft human curves. Her smile was so wide it made Jon’s cheeks hurt just to look at it.

“You you did it, Jon.” She kneeled down at his snout and kissed the smooth white scales between his eyes. “But you need to come back, okay? We can cuddle inside instead.”

He gave an unconvinced snort, grumbling and yawning. 

“Jon, no. Remember our balance. Too much of one is damaging, especially early on.”

She lifted his head to rest on her lap, though his skull was far too big to fit in this skin. Not like his wolf skin, so shaggy and soft, with the scents of winter and weirwoods and—

He shouted as his body began to shift, slowly at first, his tail sliding up his back, neck going tight as it shortened. Then his wings jolted with a great, cracking pulse. Jon slumped against Dany, human once again.

“That’s it.” She kissed his sweaty forehead, cradled him close as great trembles rocked his body. “Just breathe and relax. Let the fire settle  _ here _ .”

Her palm rested over his heart, and Jon let the churning flame follow, down, down, down into his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jonno's a dragon!!!!
> 
> I think this chapter is probably my favorite of this story so far. The next one might top that, but we'll see. Hard to decide since I haven't written it yet lol
> 
> So next update will be in two weeks, assuming all the writing goes to plan.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :D


	10. Commitment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday night, lovelies!
> 
> It's probably Wednesday for a lot of you now (or by the time you read this), but I've still got about two hours left of Tuesday here, haha. Cutting it very fine, whoops.
> 
> So we're back to Dany's POV and will be for the next chapter as well. Maybe the next two. This chapter was also originally supposed to cover what is now going to be Chapter 11, buuut these conversations needed some breathing room. We'll get to those dancing dragons next time!
> 
> Enjoy!

Joy filled Dany’s waking hours.

Instead of upon her back, Jon flew at her side in the crisp daylight. Each week brought a new excitement, a change to his dragon skin and growing confidence in his wings and flame. He was a sleek dragon, his flesh still hardening into the stony thorns and scales the rest of them had, eyes brightening to a beautiful, reflective silver. Every morning, they rushed outside together. Launching themselves from Uncle Aemon’s little balcony and transforming before the wind could tangle their soft human limbs.

Nobody else could keep up with Jon now that he’d taken his dragon skin. Some afternoons, Rhaegar dove through the clouds with them, but Jon proved fast and tough, full of a youthful vigor and endurance that only Dany could match. They rose and fell with the sun each day. A scarlet sheen began to glow on the edges of his scales, a perfect match for his sun-kissed human skin, and not unlike the crimson curves on her own.

“Still growing,” Rhaegar said, on the afternoon after Jon’s nameday a week before the solstice. He’d measured Jon once again, this time in the Dragonpit in a failed attempt to help Jon’s clumsy claws become sturdier on the ground. In the air, Jon was majestic. On the ground, however, he still stumbled like a newborn colt finding his legs. “Think you’ll outgrow me, boy?”

Jon trilled a few confident notes, then took to the skies. Dany stayed with her brother on the ground for once, her spikes petting at the warm, dusty air and Jon’s song cresting above them. Her entire body shuddered at the sound, longing to join him.

When she turned to her brother, he was squinting at her in the orange shafts of afternoon sunlight.

“What?”

“Have you talked about the solstice yet?”

Overhead, Jon’s song changed pitch, rolling over their hills like a great tide surging in. Her spikes shifted once more, urged her skyward to sing her half. In her chest, however, her purr stuttered to a halt, fire scorching up her throat. Threatened by his question, the very mention of her nameday in just six days. To the idea of surrendering any part of herself to another.

Smoke gushed from her nostrils, made Dany cough and her eyes water as she waved it away. The suddenness of it sent a wave of apprehension through her. She hadn’t let that happened since she was a small girl. Rhaegar didn’t remark on it, however.

“No,” Dany admitted. She wiped the flush of sweat from her forehead and forced her spikes under her skin. Jon’s song still reached for her, even then, but the pull in her belly was weaker. In the past few days, her reactions to Jon had been all over the place. Joy and yearning, but cold and distant, too. She couldn’t figure out the change. “Mama wants to sit us both down this week, to make sure we understand everything. To know what to expect when… if we mate this year.”

“Good. I’ve talked Jon through the basics, but its never the same twice.”

Rhaegar shaded his eyes to watch Jon’s flight. Arcing and twirling, soaring like a ribbon in the breeze. Jon was almost too much to watch with her human eyes, not close enough to etch every detail into her mind like her dragon eyes could. Dany smiled at his joy and the burbling happiness that rose within her. She took to the skies then, unable to resist.

All afternoon, they flew along the horizon together, synchronizing their movements and then complimenting the other. Every rush of air and finely-pitched note made her spikes shiver. Still, she found herself examining each choice he made as the sun sank into the sea. Searching for a weakness—a flaw—anything that would prove him less than ideal. When they landed in the navy haze of dusk, however, Jon was still Jon. All warm smiles and gentle touches as they embraced on the Red Tower’s balcony.

“You okay?” Jon nuzzled her cheek, their horns brushing.

His contentment surged into her at the contact, and yet, the fire inside her smoldered like magma. Dangerous, somehow, almost fearful. Even possessive, but not of him; of herself. Dany shook the feeling off. A remnant from hours in her dragon skin, perhaps, nothing more. Adjustments between them were natural, now that Jon had fully transformed. Among dragons, dominance was a difficult hierarchy to navigate when a new dragon took to the skies.

“I am.” Dany sniffed his throat, inhaled the brightest spot of his scent. Her entire body quaked at the ashy smell of him. Stronger every day, reaching out like a hand flailing above water for her to hoist into the sky. “Mama wants to talk with us tonight. About the solstice.”

Some of Jon’s calmness faded then. “Right.” His hands settled at her waist, thumbs rubbing at her flat belly beneath her dress. A surge of arousal and wariness ran through her. “Are we going to… I mean, do you want to do that? This year? We can wait, if you don’t want to right now.”

Something about his hesitancy annoyed her, but before Dany had a chance to answer, her mother appeared in the open balcony doors behind them. She was happier than Dany had ever seen her. All of her relatives were now. Shining eyes and wide smiles, light and peaceful, all three overjoyed at Jon’s transformation and the pair of them, together. Basking in the knowledge that their family would not end and leave Dany all alone.

“There you two are,” Rhaella said, and she kissed them each on a cheek, then pulled Jon away from Dany to examine his horns. “Still growing, I hear?”

Jon was. His spikes in human skin had finally settled, but his horns continued to thicken, their points aimed toward the sky. In his dragon skin, however, Jon grew by leaps and bounds. Already, he was closing in on Rhaegar’s wing span and size. Somehow, that irked Dany, too. She shivered as Jon let her go, eager for his touch to return and yet… cautious. Only a few days ago, Dany had thrilled with every bit of him. His scent, his touch, his wolf skin and dragon skin. Her belly went tight then, made her inhale sharply at the twinge.

“Dany?”

Jon offered his hand. Both he and her mother watched her; Jon with worry and Rhaella with a knowing, almost resigned, smile.

“Daenerys, we’ve made all your favorites for dinner.”

Her mother’s gentle tone eased some of her discomfort. Careful and slow, Dany joined her hand with Jon’s once more. She tried to shake the feelings off again. The twinge in her belly, the boil of fire in her chest, the critical way she scanned Jon from his booted feet to his scarlet horns, searching… but for what exactly, Dany couldn’t explain. He’d been perfect the day he’d first transformed, but a strange shadow cast over him now. Sharpening his newness, his gentleness, his… inexperience.

Dany frowned as she took her seat at the table where her brother and Uncle Aemon were already waiting. Like her mother, Rhaegar offered her a placating smile, as if he too understood some important secret. A massive feast covered the table, far bigger than any they’d ever had before. Even the celebration night after Jon’s first transformation and Jon’s nameday the night before hadn’t amounted to so much food.  Platters of roasted meat filled the center, some raw and bloody while others were black and charred. From quail to seal to stag, Dany examined each, the rest of the meal options forgotten. Beside her, Jon piled up a heap of vegetables on his plate, but he waited until she’d selected a hunk of steaming stag to take his own.

When he picked the same, the last of her irritation settled.

But with it came a wave of embarrassment at how judgemental she felt of him. He was exactly as he’d been for weeks now. Perhaps a tad more confident and happy without the fear of his dragon skin remaining out of reach, but Jon was Jon. The same as he’d always been. Yet, her eyes examined him continuously. His sharp gray eyes, the strong line of his bearded jaw, the unique shape of his spikes, the way those spikes moved and the brightness of their scarlet shade. It took Dany several moments to realize she was picking him apart once more. She shook the itchy feeling off.

Instead of talking, Dany ate her fill—three towering plates—until her family’s conversation dwindled and an impressive pile of bones was heaped before her. Even Jon’s stack was smaller. Only then did her mother clear her throat and carefully take her hand. All at once, Dany’s annoyance at their delicate manner returned, thrumming and hot and angry in her gut.

“Daenerys, we—”

“Are you all going to explain why you’re walking on eggshells around me or not?”

She bristled when her mother stroked her cheek, tucked a strand of silver-gold hair behind her ear. Rhaella only smiled wider when Dany scowled. Laughter danced in her eyes.

“We need to discuss the solstice,” her mother said. “Though it seems your dragon’s already made up her mind.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Nothing bad,” Rhaegar hurried to say, he took her other hand, but only to pat it briefly before letting go. Just his touch made her fury grow. Too older, too melancholy, not _right_. “The signs are all starting to show, that’s all.”

If Jon hadn’t begun to rub her neck frills right then, Dany would have snapped at her brother. With his touch, however, her body loosen. Dany leaned toward him, soaked up his ashy scent, then recoiled when he tried to hug her close. Hurt filled his eyes.

“That right there is what I mean.” Rhaella watched the pair of them for several moments, then sighed. “Part of me hoped you two might wait. Jon’s dragon skin is still so new, but it seems this is your year.”

Jon frowned. “We haven’t discussed it yet.”

“No, and that’s something you two need to do in the next few days, but the signs are all there. Well,” her mother smiled once more, “Daenerys’s signs are. Yours won’t start for a few more days, Jon. More so in the aftermath of the solstice, if you decide to dance.”

Dany glanced at Jon, saw the same concern on his face that she was certain was visible on her own. Growing up, Dany had learned the basics of how dragons mated and bonded for life. With fire and touch and a dance across the open sky. Each pair was different. No mating was the same, but they all shared the same rituals. She turned back to her mother’s gentle smile and Rhaegar’s quiet smirk, but it was Uncle Aemon who answered their questions.

“You’ve begun to assess him,” he told them, chuckling as he stirred his soup. “Your dragon to be exact, as a bonded mate. I expect you’ll have quite a few critiques in the next few days. Afterall, you are choosing one another for life, and dragons are quite particular in who they select. Your dance must be perfect, by your standards, to succeed.”

“But I’ve already picked Jon.”

“Your dragon hasn’t,” Rhaella said. “Not yet.”

“Part of mating—of bonding—is joining your individual halves together, but also bonding those halves to each other.” Uncle Aemon nodded to himself as he spoke, his pale horns flashing in the firelight. “Both dragon and human must agree.”

“And my direwolf form?”

Rhaegar and Rhaella exchanged an uncertain look. A knot of worry tightened in Dany’s belly.

“We aren’t sure, Jon. So much of mating on the solstice is instinct. And there are… risks, for both of you, but Jon especially.”

“Because of my wolf skin?”

Rhaegar hesitated. “No. At least, not as far as we know. Jon, mating like this is incredibly intimate, its a sacred form of trust you’re giving each other. A test of endurance as well, for you. A few days beforehand, you’ll find a place to be alone together, but you’ll hunt while Dany prepares. For the perfect meat for her, an offering of sorts. If she accepts it, then the fire and dancing begin.”

It sounded almost silly when her brother said it, but picturing Jon arriving on their favorite dream cliffside, a great beast clutched in his claws, made her belly warm again. For a few seconds, Dany felt like his shaggy wolf pelt was wrapped tight around her; safe, warm, familiar.

“And if I don’t accept it?”

Rhaella took a deep breath. “That’s why there’s more risk for Jon, my sweet. On the summer solstice your dragons are at their strongest, their _wildest_. If Jon’s offering isn’t to your liking, if he doesn’t roast it just as you prefer, if he so much as makes a move or song or touch you don’t like, then…”

_My dragon skin will protect me. Like with Drogo and then Daario._

Terror gripped Dany at her mother’s words. One slight and her dragon would spiral into a rage, would chase him off or worst—burn him or rip him from the sky. With Jon so new to his dragon skin, the odds weren’t on his side. He still stumbled while on the ground, in part as he adjusted to his new skin that continued to grow, but also because he spent most of his time in the air. Dany had done the same when she’d first taken her wings. And even then, mating…

It was a milestone Dany had been preparing for for years. Unconsciously in certain ways, but with great awareness in others. Crafting her song for him, finding the rhythm of the wind and the melody in her heart, imagining some future solstice when she and her chosen man would join their lives forever. When they would create a whole new life to be cherished for decades to come.

Jon’s eyes caught hers, but if Rhaella’s words concerned him, he had the courage not to show it. Her dragon preened at that, a gentle purr starting in her belly.

“What happens if we try this year and it doesn’t work? If one of us rejects the other?”

Dany’s purr stopped at once. Jon was still so new to all of this, but she’d been told that answer once, a long time ago as a girl.

“There are no second chances.” She sniffed to keep her sudden tears from falling. “And if _I_ reject you, while in my dragon skin, then… dragons do what they have to in order to protect themselves.”

“I saw a rejection once, as a boy,” Uncle Aemon said. He gave a great shudder like a icy draft had swept through the room. “A terrible thing to behold. Nothing could sate her rage until he’d crashed into the bay. She chased him for miles and miles, all the way back here. Dragons… we cannot be tamed. An incredible strength, but a great weakness, too.”

For a long time, nobody spoke. Rhaegar sipped his tea, and Uncle Aemon dozed off as his half-finished soup cooled. Her mother watched the pair of them, however, concerned but happy, too. Dany’s belly gave another uncomfortable twinge as Jon’s hand grasped hers on the tabletop. When she met his eyes, a great purr erupted in her belly. Hopeful, eager, trusting.

“It’s a wonderful experience, sharing yourself with someone like that.” Rhaegar watched them sadly. “A once in a lifetime chance for most of us. You’ll never have a first mating again, but its a massive undertaking, not to be taken lightly. Most don’t conceive the first year, but there’s always a chance.”

“You and Mama did.”

Rhaegar nodded at Jon’s words, eyes distant. “Yes, we did.” Then he poked Uncle Aemon awake, and stood up. “You two have a lot to talk about these next few days.”

Rhaella stood as well and helped Uncle Aemon to his feet. “Just remember, even though your dragon wants to try this year, you _can_ still wait. It won’t be easy, but you can fight it off another year, maybe two.”

Their unspoken words didn’t slip past Dany.

_This year is the best opportunity. The longer we fight this, the more dangerous our dragons will become._

But fear rarely cowered in the face of logic and words.

Their mating would be equally grueling for both of them, at different point and in differing ways. Afterward, though, if a new life took root in her belly, so much of the rest would fall to her. No scales nor wings nor horns. Her dragon skin would be forced to slumber until the babe in her belly lay squirming in her arms. Everything would change once they were parents.

A shudder not unlike Uncle Aemon’s ran through her as Jon and Rhaegar helped Uncle Aemon out to the balcony. While Jon assisted the pair for departure, Rhaella joined Dany in the archway. Her hand’s warmth on Dany’s bare shoulder was a welcome comfort.

“Be patient, Daenerys. In the days to come, do not forget yourself. Above all, remember the love you two share already, and moreso, _your_ temper. Dragons embolden our best and our worst. Your temper will be like lightning to a tree.”

A quick kiss was placed on her temple, just beneath her horn, then another on her cheek. Out on the balcony, Rhaegar took flight, Uncle Aemon seated on his back. Jon followed them across the growing darkness, his pale scales gleaming in the last rays of sunlight. Red and orange and violet.

“I don’t want to hurt him, Mama.”

“You’re both young and smart. If you are both not ready, then you will be wise enough to wait. Other solstices will come.”

Her knottiest fear was much harder to voice. Rhaella kept vigil at her side, though, as the sunlight gave way to a violet darkness and stars burst in the sky like bright freckles. Dany swallowed before she spoke, terrified.

“What’s it like, to be without your dragon skin for so long? Does it… I know you don’t _lose_ it, but…”

She was led back inside to the glowing fire and seated on her mother’s couch. Rhaella poured her a steaming cup of tea and made her drink half of it before she answered.

“My first pregnancy with Rhaegar was one of the best years of my life. Our second solstice together, me and your father, but even then, I feared the same as you do now. The first year, we did not conceive, but the second gave me your brother.” A great smile lit her mother’s face. “I think you’ll agree he was worth the risk?”

Dany rolled her eyes, but nodded. Without Rhaegar, she’d have been far lonelier growing up with just her elderly uncle and mother. Jon, too, would not exist.

“But I will not lie to you. Losing your dragon for a year is a terror unlike any I’ve ever known. At first it left me in a panic, but your father was kinder then. Gentle and loving and just as excited as I was to welcome our first child. I never felt safer than I did with him that year. Still, to trust another so fully that you give up your second soul for a year—your greatest protection—to create a child with him… you have every right to be scared of that. I’d be worried if you weren’t. But feeling that tiny life growing in your belly, stirring and kicking and then nursing at your breast, its a gift few get to know.”

“I do want to,” Dany whispered even as she shivered and let her mother wrap a blanket around her shoulders. “I just _hate_ not even having my horns. Or spikes. After what happened last year, I don’t know if I can bare it.”

“You’ve had your dragon far longer than I did at your age,” Rhaella reminded her. “In some ways, I was grateful you found your wings so young, Dany. But we all did wonder if it might become a problem later on. With your size or with mating, if you found someone. These days, my dragon skin is an ingrained part of myself, but at fifteen? Sixteen? Even at seventeen, it was something I was still adjusting to, as Jon is now. For you, it’s been a piece of you as far back as you can remember. Letting go of that, when you are not already used to doing so to carrying a child, will not be easy, but you and Jon…”

_He loves me. Jon will protect us, if it should ever come to that._

Yet another voice disagreed, considered Jon’s slighter size and still hardening scales, his wobbling walk while on the ground. How could such a fresh, young dragon protect her and their potential babe?

“Dany, if you decide to wait, then you and I will fly off for the week, just the two of us. Leave your brother and uncle to restrain Jon.”

She laughed at that image. Poor Jon, eager and lustful, trying to dart past her brother blocking the balcony. Even being shut away in his room so as not to engulf himself in his instinct to follow her, to seek her out and mate.  

Her mother retired for the evening, left Dany sitting by the fire until Jon returned from Visenya’s Hill. He was flushed from his flight, his horns a bright, beautiful scarlet still, his spikes unfurled in their gorgeous serrate leaf shapes. Dany preened at the sight of them, her purr rumbling up from her tummy.

“It’s a lovely night,” Jon told her, pecking her on the cheek, his own purr matching hers. He nudged her jaw with his nose, then bit her earlobe, eager as ever. “We should take a moonlit flight, love. Just the two of us. Find a quiet place to talk together.”

“And to fuck?”

“If you want.”

Jon nipped at her throat, then offered his hand like he had hours before. Her dragon gave another wary hesitation, but Dany pushed through it. She was safe with Jon, and always would be. Together, they took to the skies as the moon rose over the bay.

For hours they twisted under the stars, gliding alongside one another, their claws stirring up the calm waters. Jon sang to her, happiness and assurances and passion. As the moon rose, so did Dany’s need. Her dragon had no doubts when they were in the air together, when Jon’s voice joined with hers. They landed on her favorite muddy beach. Jon hadn’t even caught his breath when Dany pushed him down, unlaced his breeches, and sheathed his cock inside her. Their fucking was rarely gentle and slow, but out in the open that night, Dany rode him until they were both aching and bleeding from bites and scratches and the rough ground beneath them.

They stayed tangled together until the moon was high in the sky. Dany shook and trembled in his lap, rested her face in the curve of his neck. Every touch set her inside alight. When Jon tried to ease her off his softening cock, Dany bit his neck and clutched him closer. She couldn’t explain the urge to stay joined, but she suspected the reason lay a few days in their future.

“Okay, shhh, all right.” Jon rubbed her spikes, his fingertips drifting up and down her sides as he kissed her ear, then leaned back until he could kiss her properly. He seemed startled by the tears in her eyes. “Dany? What’s wrong?”

“I-I…”

Jon kissed her, a few soft presses, then hissed when she bit his bottom lip. A dot of blood appeared, sliding down into his beard.

“Sorry, I… gods, I don’t ever want to lose this, okay?”

He seemed to understand, a spark lighting his gaze as she wiped at her eyes, then tugged at the ripped remains of his tunic. She had not been gentle. Neither of them had.

“Why would you think you would? I’m not going anywhere without you, Dany. Never again, okay?”

“Show me,” she urged, the fire in her chest felt hot enough to burn through her skin. “Show me _now_.”

Jon flipped them, grinning as he tore her dress off. “So demanding.”

“Fuck me.”

He wasted no time, thrusting into her hard enough to make her womb cramp inside her. They fucked as the tide rolled in, trickling past their feet and ankles until he’d spilled inside her once more. Dany cried out as her orgasm ripped through her, shaking her entire body as Jon sucked at her throat and pinned her in place beneath him.

Just as quick as she’d come, the moment ended. Her dragon roared to life inside her, pushed at his shoulders until he released her, slumping over beside her, exhausted. Dany sat up. Water brushed up her calves to her knees as Jon lay beside her, his breathing slowing.

“I’m sorry I keep—”

“It’s okay, Dany. Honestly. You think Uncle Aemon and Father didn’t warn me about the week before the solstice? Uncle Aemon’s had me reading every accounting they could find of dragons who became lovers before they mated on the solstice. They all warned me about this quite a bit.”

She glanced over at him as he sat up, rubbing the bleeding scratches and bite marks she’d left in the heat of their passion.

“Did I hurt you?” Dany asked him.

“Not in any way I didn’t like.” Jon dipped his hand in the tide as it surged in again, wiped it over his chest and shoulders. “You’re okay, too? Besides the dragon-human war raging inside you?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip as the warm water brushed her thighs. At the moment, her fire was quite content. “I like rough fucking with you.”

“Every time?”

“Sometimes.”

“We’re going to be quite the sight, landing naked on the balcony if any of them catch us.”

Bubbles of laughter filled her, up her throat and out in the open. Their chuckles drifted across the beach and the water until her chest ached from it. They collected what remained of their clothing and headed further up the shore to the rocky outcroppings. Jon’s fire dream had happened only weeks before in the same spot.

“Dragon skins aside, do you want to mate on the solstice? With me?”

Jon’s question was so nervous, Dany had the strange urge to both slap him and curl up against his chest. She settled for leaning her head on his shoulder as her mother’s words echoed back to her: _Your temper will be like lightning to a tree_.

“I do. Only… being without my dragon skin frightens me. If we make a child, I won’t be able to shift or fly until its born.”

_Everything will depend on you. My safety, our hunting, so much that may be too soon._

“Are you ready for that? If you aren’t, that’s fine. I mean, this part of me is still so new.”

Dany considered his question. She wanted nothing more than to claim Jon as hers for the rest of their lives, to fuck and love and raise a family together. But still, her heart thundered against her ribs, fear tightening her lungs.

“I think I am. As ready as I can be for the first time.” Dany reached for his hand and found it warm and strong. “Mama talked about it some, says its normal to worry and be frightened.”

“I am, too.” Jon’s soft laugh relaxed her further. “But… there’s something else I want to talk about, before we decide to do this. About me and my pack. Back at home.”

_Home._

Jon had talked longing of his Stark family for months now. In short details and then in robust, charming stories. Dany hadn’t met any of them, but she had a wonderful picture of each member. Arya and Robb, Lyanna and Uncle Ned, even the pack’s alpha, Lyarra. All different, but a part of Jon she would never suggest he give up.

“Dany, I’m an alpha.”

Her snort echoed over the rocky beach as the tide continued to wash in. Jon ran a hand through his curls.

“I mean, in my pack. Not just because I’m a dragon. All dragons are alphas, but it’s different for wolves. Very few are alphas and… when one is born, it’s very likely that they’ll take over the pack some day. Together, with their mate.”

“Oh.”

A sudden chill swept over her. Numerous thoughts ran through her mind. Of spending their lives in a snowy castle she’d only seen a few crude drawings of, then of splitting their year between the north and the south; even migrating Jon’s pack to the south. None of them quite fit.

“It’s a lot to ask and I… I’m not sure that’s what I want anymore. Before I left I wasn’t even sure. Nana Lyarra expects it, I think. My mother could have taken over someday, too, but… without a mate at her side, you know, its just not the same. It has to be a pair of alphas, together.”

“How do you picture it? If we took over leading your pack?”

Jon shook his head, his curls falling into his face like a dark stringy curtain. “I don’t know. Six moons ago? Probably finding you and falling in love and returning home so we could live our lives there, but now… finding you—and our family—was so much more than I expected. Can I picture us, together, at Winterfell? Yeah, but I can’t imagine us giving this up either. I don’t want to give this up, or ask you to do that forever either.”

Overhead, the moon trekked higher into the sky. Its majestic glow was reflected in the rippling surface of the sea. Dany eyed the pair, both the same and yet strange in their differences. Finally, she spoke.

“When do you take over? Is it set in stone or a decision for later?”

“Years from now, if I do. When Nana Lyarra is too old to lead. And maybe… my youngest cousins are still small. One of them may be an alpha without us knowing it yet.”

“Or one of our little ones.” Her belly throbbed again, a deep warm twinge until she snuggled closer to Jon’s side. “If they need us, too, then we can. We’ll figure it out when we get there. Especially once we’re the last dragons.”

“We won’t be,” Jon told her, and his voice rang with certainty and hope. “I’m a dragon, too, the same as you. Now we can make more dragons. Only if you want, of course.”

“I do.” She climbed into his lap, shivering at the cool breeze off the sea, but radiant as Jon’s bare skin warmed hers. “I know there’s risk, but I want to be yours, Jon. Do you want to be mine?”

“Yes, gods, _yes_.”

She gave him a stern look when he tried to kiss her. Dany pressed a finger to his lips until he stilled beneath her. Another critical sweep of his face, of his horns that were now as big as her own and those delightful, trusting, honest gray eyes.

“I need to know that you’re prepared for this, Jon. For everything it means if we conceive this year. To protect us and hunt for us, to keep our trust and love.”

One side of his mouth pulled up in a smile. Dany tucked her hair behind her ears, stroked his thumbs over her cheeks as he cupped her face.

“I am, Daenerys Targaryen. You think I fly and sing from sunrise to sunset just for fun? Mating with you means I have to be at my best, to prove I’m worthy to all of you. I know I’m new to my wings, and that might make you hesitant to mate this year, but I will not let you down. We’re strong, both of us, especially together. I know the risks and what’s expected of me, and I cannot wait to be yours. Or to love and worship you as you grow our baby inside you some day. And if you change your mind, even the morning off, that’s fine with me, too.”

“Will you fly me around on your back?” Dany asked as she closed her hands around his sturdy wrists.

He chuckled and smiled. “Seems only right after all those months of you doing the same for me.”

Her kiss was hot and fierce, full of quick bites on his lips and her fingers scratching at the coarse hair on his jaw. When she pulled back to meet his eyes once more, Jon’s calm eyes soothed the last of her fears.

“In a few days, you’ll be mine entirely, Jon Targaryen.”

“I already am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will see you in two weeks again! And for Embers next Tuesday, as long as the writing goes well... and maybe a random Hogwarts!Jonerys one shot in between if I cannot contain myself.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!! <3


	11. A Dance With Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a week late, yes, I know. But I am still around! 
> 
> Writing a chapter in 6-7 days (between rotating this story and Embers), and then trying to edit and clean it up on top of real life jobs etc. is.... taxing after a while. So an extra week to make sure I did this one right since its an important chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy the update! :)

Each day closer to the solstice increased Dany’s erratic moods.

The morning after her moonlit flight with Jon, she snapped and glowered at his gentleness. Their sex life came to a halt as well. Shifting from their rough fucking on the beach, to a sensual morning of rutting and tasting each other, until a day later when the very idea of penetration of any kind made Dany bristle. Another mark of her instincts preparing, Rhaella told her, but their sudden lack of sexual intimacy was a difficult barrier to overcome.

Day after day, Dany’s critical eyes considered Jon. From his confident, graceful walk to his glowing smiles to the firmness of each muscle along his arms and back and chest. Everything was to her liking, except in those moments when her dragon woke to snarl and fight against her urge to give herself so fully to someone else.

Three days before the solstice, Dany spent the daylight bundled up before the roaring hearth, soaking up the warmth to fight off her sudden wave of shivers. She snapped at Jon as soon as he tried to touch her, didn’t see him again until dusk. His musky sweat filled the room upon his return, heavy enough to make her drowsy.

“Love?”

Dany shifted in her pile of blankets and pillows before the hearth. She tracked Jon by his scent—from the balcony to their shared room and then trotting to her side on four great paws. Ghost whined at her from a safe distance, pawed the ground in question. His tail gave a hopeful wag when she glanced over and met his scarlet eyes.

Her spikes bristled at his presence, her dragon boiling up in her gut—fighting her yearning to trust in him, to touch and hold and be his. To be _anyone’s_ but her own.

 _Dragons were meant to be solitary_ , Dany reminded herself, _and hardest of all is convincing my dragon to let me go for the next year. To trust another to do what she cannot._

Her dragon continued to waver between trust and scorn with each journey of the sun closer to its highest arc in the sky; its longest venture for the year.

Jon was patient with her. When she only stared at him, he eased his shaggy body to the stone, resting on his belly. He watched her for a time, not leering or smelling of dominance and lust. As always, he was simply Jon. More bloody sap than hard ash while in his direwolf skin. That difference had only begun its distinction in the last few weeks. Ever since Jon’s first successful shift to his wings, his scents had begun to diverge. More hot ash in scales, a strong scent of weirwood sap in his fur.

With the last strands of sunlight, Dany’s shivers faded. Her spikes slid back under her skin. Despite the cooler breeze coming in from the balcony and the salty air, she felt calmer, warmer. When she reached out her palm, offered it to Jon, he pressed his damp snout to it, then dipped his head. Dany dug her fingers into the thick, pale fur, rubbing his ears. In seconds, Jon was human once more. He pushed her blankets aside and tucked his pelt around her instead.

A wave of relief ran through her.

“Just a few more days,” Jon mumbled. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pressed a kiss to her ear. “I learned to dive today.”

“Rhaegar taught you?”

He nodded against her cheek, let their horns knock gently. Dany shuddered at the feeling, at the twinge of want that settled in her belly. A second later, her throat went dry, a gush of smoke choking her. Her dragon growled, then went limp as Jon’s fingers scratched slowly at her neck frills.

“Bruised my shoulder a bit,” Jon told her, his fingers stroking slow and steady along each swoop, then the soft skin between them. “Swallowed a _lot_ of water, too. You should have seen Papa laughing at me over it.”

“He did the same to me.”

“Maybe he’ll do the same for our little dragon-wolves one day.”

Very carefully, Jon placed his palm on her belly. Dany tensed at once, a rumble of fire tight in her chest, but his scent washed over her and her dragon settled. Still wary and watchful, but approving, too.

“I hope so.” Dany leaned back into his arms, pressed her nose against his throat. “If it feels like this each time, we may just have one.”

She ached all over. From her temples to her joints to her hips. Shaky and weak one moment, then full of vigor and fire the next. Ricocheting between the two was becoming exhausting, but tomorrow…

Knots of tension loosen in her belly at the thought of tomorrow’s dawn.

Two days before the solstice, but a gorgeous day to fly. To spread her wings, to let the wind and the sea guide her east; to find the perfect, ash-covered place to rest.

“One or five or none, I’m happy so long as I’m with you, Dany.”

Her purrs returned then, full and hot and soothing as they rumbled throughout her torso. Jon kissed her cheek, then scooped her up and carried her to bed. He held her throughout the night, awake every time she roused or shifted, protective and watchful as she dozed. Caressing her skin, running his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. By dawn, Dany’s skin was itching. Feverish sweats broke out on her neck and face with first light. The need to be alone with Jon was almost maddening. Like a molten bubbling under her skin, running from her head to her toes and back, over and over.

“Today,” she told Jon, before they’d even gotten out of bed. “Let’s go find our cliff today.”

“Okay.”

They ate breakfast on the balcony, but Dany couldn’t focus with the heat of summer rubbing at her skin. Both from inside and out she felt it, sweating and anxious to be in her scales, to take her wings to the sky and never look back.

“We packed you some essentials,” Rhaegar told them, once they’d finished eating. “Some food, blankets, clothes. Enough for a week, besides whatever you hunt. Jon, we’ll strap it to you once you’re in your dragon skin.”

Dany bristled at that, fighting her dragon’s temper to be the one selected with the knowledge that if they succeeded fully, she would not be able to fly it back. Fitting the harness to Jon’s dragon made sense. But it still wasn’t easy to accept.

“Relax, dear,” her mother told her as Jon shifted and let Rhaegar climb his back to fit the harness in place. “Don’t set anyone’s hair on fire like I did.”

“You _didn’t._ ”

“Your grandfather’s, actually. He made the mistake of explaining that bit when I’d already transformed.” She chuckled at the memory. “Fortunately, I missed most of him, but gods, I got such a lecture when we returned.”

“Is it only like this the first time? The shivers and sweats and _aches_ and—”

“Bits of that persist in the years that follow, especially if you two go several years without trying, but no. The first year is by far the worst,” Rhaella said. “Once you’ve bonded for life, the majority of your irritation and temper will dissipate. The shivers and achy joints… well, they ebb and flow like the tide. Some years are worse than others. Some solstices, you feel no symptoms at all. It can differ by person and by year, I’m afraid.”

Her mother’s explanation wasn’t quite what she’d hoped to hear, but Dany did take some comfort in it. After this summer, once she and Jon belonged entirely to the other, the worst of this would be behind them. And so many years of life and happiness and newborn babes lay before them.

As Rhaegar climbed down and had a final word with Jon, Dany hugged her mother and Uncle Aemon tight. Rhaegar was the last, tentative in her current state as Jon took to the sky, but Dany embraced him before he could decide if it was safe.

“I’ll miss you, brother.”

“And you.” Rhaegar kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight. “Take care of each other, okay? And Dany… Jon is… just be good to each other. We’ll see you in a week or so, right?”

His voice caught as he spoke, and when they pulled apart, she found his indigo eyes were bright with tears. Rhaegar glanced at Jon circling high above.

“I won’t hurt him, I promise we’ll both come back.”

He nodded and stepped back inside, under the archway with her mother and Uncle Aemon. Dany shifted into the light wind ruffling her dress, soaring up to join Jon.

Together, they circled the hills twice, found a comfortable pace, then turned toward the bay and east. She sang as she flew, for the first time in several days. The air was hot and moist, the clouds thin and few against the cerulean sky. Her vision seemed to change the further from home they journeyed, flashes of old dreams pulling her onward. Jon, too, seemed to feel that same tugging, like a rope around his chest, yanking him east and into a part of the sea Dany had never flown across before.

Since she was small, her mother and brother had always warned her against the bay’s entrance. The smoky, dark skies, the thunder of liquid earth fracturing the ground, the great clouds of ash that had persisted since Uncle Aemon’s childhood. Volcanoes towered from the sea here, hidden amongst the heavy, black clouds.

“Never go there,” Rhaella always told her when she was small. “It’s too dark to see, and the air can make it hard to breathe. You might fly into a volcano, or have its eruption rain down upon you.”

But Jon had never been told such things. As soon as they spotted the plumes of gray clouds expanding to fill the horizon, Jon let out a joyful note of recognition. In his song, Dany felt the familiarity, too. The saltiness of the air mixed with hot ash, the charged scent of embers flickering just out of sight. They drifted lower, wing tips skimming the slate water, Jon coasting along before her. Darkness closed in around them as they continued east. Ash rained down like warm snow, a welcome heat on her scales. Only Jon’s paleness was visible as the gray clouds turned black, and the sunlight faded.

All the while, Jon sang back to her. Assurances, trust, love—a certainty Dany felt in every part of her soul as her vision locked in on the pale glow of his scales in the vast blackness around them.

A great rumble echoed through the thick clouds, strangely muted yet in time with the pounds of her heart. Overhead, a streak of ruby blazed through the black. Molten earth, steaming and boiling. Dany gave a cry of warning, but Jon was prepared. He glided to the right, swooping out with her, as the volcano’s lava and rock splashed into the sea. As more littered the clouds and sea behind them, a burst of light parted the blackness before them.

Jon’s scales blended into the sudden light. As his body disappeared, Dany put on a burst of speed, her cry of worry chasing him, and instead, flew into an unexpected calm world.

The great island blinded her for a moment. Fields of rich green grasses, granite gray cliff sides, with the massive volcano as a backdrop, choking the sky with gushes of black smoke and sparking ash. Rivers of lava poured down its steep sides like vibrant orange veins. The sun reappeared, peering down at them from the open circle in the clouds over the island’s center. Below, Jon was spiralling slowly down to land, at the edge where the grassy field met the black soil by the volcano’s slope.

Dany headed for the ground and transform as soon as her claws found traction in the soft soil. Jon was fighting his way out of the harness, too massive for his human skin.

“This is it,” Dany told him, unhooking one strap tangled around Jon’s chest and horns. “The smells, the sights…”

As the volcano spewed another bubble of lava into the clouds, Dany’s core gave a wonderful hot pulse. Jon folded up the harness and tucked it under his arm, shouldered the smaller bag of their goods. He kissed her cheek, gave her earlobe a quick nip. Dany leaned into him, twined their fingers together.

“Let’s find somewhere to shelter for the night. A cave or something.”

But Jon’s idea did little to direct Dany away from the cliffs. She tugged him toward the closest one, a sharp wind whipping their hair back. All around the island’s perimeter they walked, growing steadily closer to the volcano’s black rock. They were within striking distance when Dany stopped, her knees shaking and hips aching worse than before. Elation almost buckled her.

“Here,” she said, as Jon caught her elbows to support her weak knees. “This spot. This is ours.”

They sank to the grass together. Great shivers ran up and down Dany’s spine. She settled against Jon’s stable warmth and shut her eyes, breathing in the salty ash, the way the ground trembled just slightly beneath them, the steam of the molten earth churning below. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears, pulsing hard in her wrists and head and chest. Jon’s pelt dropped around her shoulders, shaggy and safe and warm.

“There’s a cave, just there,” Jon mumbled as he wrapped her up tight. “We can sleep there tonight. Maybe see how far it goes.”

She blinked in the sunlight, trying to keep her eyes open to see where Jon was pointing. On the volcano’s side, where the cliffs fell sharply away into the sea, a thin crack split the black rock. Another shiver ran down her spine, her spikes shivering. Together, they made there way to the opening. Inside the cave was far from her expectation of bare walls and a dirt floor. It was still dark, but the walls seemed to sparkle as strands of sunlight crept in.

“What is that?”

Dany ran her fingers over the nearest spot and found a smooth, brittle surface. Jon broke a piece off and turned it over in his hands.

“Some sort of crystal.”

He held it outside the cave opening and the black crystal shined like glass.

“Obsidian,” Dany told him as he passed the wedge to her. “Uncle Aemon has some in his library, but its older than he is.”

As Jon unpacked their supplies, Dany explored the cliff beside their cave. Sharp rocks littered the shore line, and there was nothing in the way of a noticeable, sandy beach. Flaking charcoal-colored trails of cooling lava ran into the raging tide. As she watched, little bursts of amber and orange and red bubbled out and sunk into the foaming water.  The winds were cool and strong, swirling the clouds overhead to let the sunlight through. Already it was setting, painting the globe of visible sky a rosy pink with streaks of bruised purple.

“You okay still?”

Jon wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressed his nose against her neck. Dany clutched his forearms tight, her spikes sinking into her skin as she pulled him closer.

“I am.” For the first time in a week, Dany felt sure saying that. “Eager to see what you bring me to eat.”

He laughed and kissed her neck. “Hmm, I’ve got a few ideas. You’ll be fine here alone tomorrow?”

“I’ll be ready and waiting.”

They settled in as darkness fell across the island. Rumbles and gushes of steam bellowed up from the cave’s depths, and far below Dany could just make out the wet slapping of high tide rushing against the cliffs. She was perfectly warm curled up with Jon amongst their little heap of pillows and blankets, his pelt draped over her. Jon fell asleep quickly, exhausted after his sleepless night before, but Dany couldn’t sleep. Resting against him, Dany examined his features, youthful and relaxed as he slept. She gave his horns a gentle scratch until his purrs joined the volcano’s steady rumbles.

He was a thing of beauty, truly.

In two days, Jon would be twirling amongst the clouds and ash with her. His pale scales reflecting the orange hues of sunlight, the molten bursts of lava, the dark glints of volcanic rock and plumes of cloud. Her purr joined the cacophony of sounds, rising above Jon’s, then wavering lower to match his pitch. She pressed her face against his throat, and listened for the steady thuds of his heartbeat.

When she woke, gray light lit the cave’s entrance. Mist wafted in from the grassy fields, so thick she could see nothing of the world beyond. Jon was already awake, still holding her tight against his side.

“S’morning.”

Dany nodded as a jolt of excitement ran through her. One more day.

But today would be a solitary day for each of them. Before long, Jon would leave to hunt—to find the perfect feast to present her with in tomorrow’s morning light.

She turned to look at him and was surprised to find his dragon eyes fighting to get free. His normally dark gray eyes were brighter, almost glowing in the semi-darkness of their cave, the pupils shifting from narrow slits to fat orbs with each blink. His third eyelid slid into sight, then disappeared.

“Jon?”

He shook his head.

“Sorry, I can smell… like a trail. A path for where to go.”

They disentangled themselves from their little nest and broke their fasts on a loaf of bread, a wedge of hard cheese, and an apple a piece. Jon’s eyes continued to shift. Every few bites he raised his nose to the cave opening, scenting the air with several deep breaths. Dany led the way into the misty dawn toward the grassy fields to where they’d landed yesterday afternoon.

Overhead, the clouds were thinning, the stars fading against the brightening sky. The volcano was still grumbling, but the vibrations that had shaken the ground all night had quieted.

“It’s beautiful here,” Jon told her, his eyes back to the silver of his dragon. “A perfect dragon nest, a perfect place to mate.”

He seemed half in a dream, so much so that it took Dany a moment to redirect his attention.

“Hey, easy, come here.”

Jon blinked, and his human eyes returned. He took a long sniff of his pelt draped across his shoulders like a cloak.

“It’s time for me to go,” Jon said. He nodded a few times like he was trying to convince himself. “I’ll be back at first light, love. I promise.”

Despite his assurances, Dany’s stomach knotted with worry. Jon had come into his dragon skin at a sprint instead of a steady race. His scales were hardening still, his control easily distracted if he remained a dragon for too long, and yet…

Jon’s eyes had never been steadier than when he looked at her now.

“I’ll be waiting, Jon Targaryen, so don’t you dare be late.”

He grinned, squinting at the parting clouds overhead. “I won’t. Here, you take this.”

Jon slid his pelt off his shoulders and wrapped it around her. Dany clutched it close as its sleepy warmth settled into her flesh. “Are you sure? Your pelt—”

“Will be safe with you.” He stepped closer, until they were chest to chest, their noses brushing against each other. “I won’t be here to warm you, but my pelt can.”

Dany yanked him in for a fierce kiss, nipping his bottom lip, then soothing it with her tongue. “Be safe, Jon.”

“You, too.”

He kissed her forehead and stepped away. Within moments, Jon was airborne. He took a swift lap around the field, sang one loving note, then ascended into the thick clouds that blocked the sea from view. High above, the volcano was smoking, its crown glowing against the dark clouds. A few flakes of ash rained down on Dany’s shaggy shoulders. She brushed them off, inhaled Jon’s scent, then tried to busy herself for her day of solitude.

Exploring the island to pass the time was quite enjoyable. Dany walked the island’s perimeter to find a way down to the water, but the cliffs were all jagged and steep. She found no safe way to the narrow shoreline through the meandering cave network either, though she did collect more obsidian from its depths, in shades of violet and ruby and jade. They might have little use for such things, but Uncle Aemon and Rhaegar would love to examine them.

By midday, Dany was covered in grim and mud and sweat. Feverish trembles racked her body as she returned to the windswept cliffs, but no amount of cool breezes helped calm her. Her spikes flinched and shifted, fire burbling in her gut. Hunger gnawed her insides, but not for the hard cheese and bread in their cave. For fresh meat, a sizzling, heated hunk of flesh—a feast gifted to her by a hopeful mate. Dragonflame seared up her throat as she set Jon’s pelt and her clothes in their cave and gave into her dragon’s insistence.

Her wings caught the wind like a melody. Dany sunk into the security and heat of her scales, let her dragon’s fire wrap around her like a lullaby. Seconds leapt away from her. Time turned disjointed so that one moment she was diving into the sea off the island’s western shore and then the next, weaving through the low slung clouds as the sun sunk into the sea. As dusk descended, so did Dany, circling back to the fields as sparks of flame and molten rock decorated the smoky sky.

She paced the island, spitting fire and scarring the earth with her claws, restless and watchful of the starry dome above, lumbering around until Jon’s familiar scent overwhelmed her. Dany gave a delighted shriek at his early return, then came up short at the cave’s entrance. Her great eyes fell on his shaggy white pelt tucked just inside. A deep, mournful croon left her as she pressed her smoking snout against it. Wafts of smoky, weirwood ash filled her lungs.

_I’ll be back at first light, love. I promise._

Dany buried her snout in his fur, inhaled until her heartbeat slowed and her frantic mind eased. Her dragon was wild and restless, as fearful of joining with Jon as losing him. She settled at the cave’s opening, rested her great, horned head on his pelt. Sleep did not come, but with the sun hidden for the night, part of her human self returned. Reminders of their preparations, of Jon’s words to her that morning, for it had only been that very morning that he had left. He’d gone to hunt down a great feast so as to spoil her, to bring back succulent meat ripe off the bone, to worship and adore every part of her.

A pre-dawn rain shower brought another wave of mist to the island. Dany grimaced as the first drops fell, making her scales steam and hiss until she shifted and was soft and human once more. She sat naked inside the cave, wrapped in Jon’s warm pelt until the rain faded and the rumble of the volcano greeted the thickening mist.

Outside, the sun was rising.

Dany hurried toward it, swiping the damp mist aside, retracing her first steps on the island until she found that one spot from the day before. Her knees shook when her toes sunk into the soft, damp grass, a rush of smells swirling around her—ash and embers and prickling salt popping in her nostrils; the endless taste of blood and smoke and Jon’s kiss flooding her mouth. She found a drier patch of grass that she’d scorched the night before and carefully lay Jon’s pelt out, bright white against the flaky ash and burn marks.

“For later,” Dany whispered, stroking her fingers through the thick fur. She glanced skyward through the sparkling remains of mist. “He’ll come back. He always has before.”

Sunlight broke through the clouds and mist, a ruby glow blazing on the horizon. Dany shifted back to her dragon skin as the heat brushed her bare skin. She took to the skies, circling the volcano, calling toward the western shores until her song echoed across the sea. Fiery heat touched her scales as she flew, faster and harder, her chest heaving in the shadow of the volcano’s molten light.

From afar, Jon’s song answered.

A swell of victory expanded inside her, soaring her higher as a rush of joy and love choked her voice off. She couldn’t see Jon’s paleness amongst the haze of cloudy smoke, but his song grew louder and stronger. Every breath brought him closer, until Dany was panting as she came in to land, her claws gouging into the volcano’s rocky side. She remained perched there, waiting. Below the smoke and clouds, Jon’s pale leathery wings appeared, skimming through the mist. Something bright and golden was clutched in his claws.

As swift as her joy had arrived it fractured with a wave of leeriness. Dany peered down at him as he landed. He settled his offering in the grass, shaking his neck frills out, speckling the ground with blood. A great, golden stag lay on the dirt, its thin fur and flesh still steaming warm in the morning air, its neck freshly broken. A pair of giant gleaming antlers adorned its head.

Her purrs rumbled up, head stretching toward the delicious scent. But it was Jon’s movements she watched, wary and uncertain, despite his words of promise lingering in her mind. He glided low over the scorched earth, singing softly, weaving gently back and forth, calling to her. Dany descended slowly, scrutinizing his every breath and cry and step. His thorny chest was heaving from his journey, a gleam of sweat and ash and blood splattered over his scales. He tapped his wing claws on the ground, nudged the stag forward a few more feet to entice her.

His scent engulfed her like a cloud, tantalizing and strong, made her vision swim and a rush of heat flood her body.

She approached on careful claws, hunkered lower to the earth as the volcano shook the ground beneath them. Jon’s eyes glowed silver, pupils dark and wide. Dany gave the stag a quick sniff, then pulled back, her eyes locking on Jon once more. Her roar demanded her cooked feast, shook the island almost as much as the volcano. Hunger tightened her belly, brought a sudden, empty ache of need to her chest.

Jon trilled one steady note, hunched low to the ground and unleashed a blast of pale, crisp flame. His fire was blazing hot, made the air between them waver as the stag’s golden flesh ignited, charring and crackling. Sweet fat dripped to the dirt as the meat roasted. Threads of scarlet ran through his dragonflame as Dany considered him, timing his cooking and control, counting by her breaths, _daring_ him to go over her preferred temperature…

He snorted a last belch of flame, shook his head as the blackening meat continued to cook, then blew out the smoldering feast.

It sizzled before Dany as perfect as if she’d roasted it herself. Skin continued to blacken and fat puddled beneath the seared limbs and crumbling antlers. She cast another warning glance at Jon, bowed her head, and ripped off a strip of boiling, smoking flesh with her teeth. Her slow chews might have unsettled another dragon, but Jon cooed from his place behind the stag. When Dany looked up, he was hopping in pride.

Her growl of warning made him stop, but only for a moment. His entire body shuddered, shaking with his encouraging purrs. Gushes of blood dribbled down her chin, the heat exquisite on her tongue. He gave another thrilled hop, eyes gleaming. Adorable, every inch of him. Dany swallowed her first delicious bite, then dug in.

As she ate, Jon shuffled closer, singing his sweet trills toward her. Stretching his head closer, then back, in a steady approach as Dany gorged herself. Every bite was superb, warming her insides further, calming her hungry temper. She hunkered down, gobbled up everything in sight. Dany was so distracted, she almost didn’t notice Jon was beside her until his snout brushed her wing joint.

She glowered at his interruption, chewing through bone and sinew and blackened flesh, a steaming rope of entrails dangling from her mouth. The moment Jon’s silver eyes met hers, a flash of heat and want raced through her. Jon tilted his head toward her. He rubbed his thorny cheek against her shoulder, singing his admiration. Every fiery and soft intention, his sweet and fierce heart.

Dany shut her eyes as she finished her feast, calming with her belly full and Jon’s song humming against her scales. He rubbed all over her—wings and neck frills and finally, with her last bite, Jon nudged her cheek with his own.

Her insides melted at the touch. Shudders ran up and down her spine and tail. Dany tipped her head toward his, let their horns scratch together and then their necks twine. His affection made her heart pound like a drumbeat behind her eyes. They stayed locked together, rubbing their cheeks and neck frills against each other. Until the tremor of her purrs swooped low to match his. Dany unfolded her wings then, gave one hopeful flap, crying out toward the hazy sky. A cloud of volcanic ash filled the air around them.

She lumbered backward, shook her head until the contented daze lifted from her mind. Jon unfolded his wings, too. He raised the right one to mimic her movement. Then the left, beating them off time with each other, his tail sweeping through the grass. When Dany gave another roar, Jon took off into the sky.

As his dance began, Dany took one last moment to inspect him, but for nought. Every sweep of his wings, every blaze of sunlight painting his scales amber and orange and slate made her dragon skin quiver. Dany took a running leap and joined him.

She caught him in only a few flaps, gliding beside him under the warmth of the midday sun. Jon mirrored her movements when they met, sang one soaring note, and let forth a burst of pale, smoky flame.

Dany did the same—streaking through her black fire and out the other side. Sparks and ash glistened on her scales. Joy filled her like a surging eruption. All at once, the land below dropped away and the horizon turned fuzzy and clouded. She began her song then, crafting every note to rise and fall with the hurried beats of her heart. Jon’s lower tones pulsed with hers, rising in crescendo until they burst through the clouds domed over the island. He drew every breath of her focus. A perfect compliment to her singing, to the twists and twirls of her flight. Almost to a second, he was in time with her body, flapping when she did, weaving side to side, diving and rising high.

They danced until the sun began its noticeable descent, gliding lower with each note and cry, until the sun dipped below the volcano’s smoky cloud layer. Dany followed it down, found the island sprinkled with pockets of mist and sunlight breaking through the gloom like spears. She landed in the globe of mist hovering over Jon’s pelt, bathed the nearby grass with her dragonflame. Jon circled twice above, used his own flame to gouge a flickering, smoking rim of white-scarlet fire around them forty feet wide. As Dany dove into her ruby and black flames, rolled herself in their heat, Jon landed before her. He did the same with his fire, let it lick over his scales and skim off the edges of his wings. His thorny chest was heaving quickly, his pupils so wide his eyes were black.

Dany transformed as she moved toward him, stepping beyond the black flame boundary. She was bare and gleaming with sweat. Rivets ran down her belly and thighs as Jon’s glittering teeth and wings shrunk away into his line of flame. When he emerged before her, Jon was human again. His scarlet horns were visible, his chest and hard stomach dripping with sweat, too. Every muscle in his thighs and arms was tensed, shifting appealingly under his skin. Her eyes traced every line and curve, every damp dark curl, finally falling to his cock, already thick and hard.

She dragged his mouth to hers, crashed their bodies together in a fumbling tangle of limbs and sweat and scratching fingers.

“I need you, I need you, I need you…”

Her voice was almost overwhelmed by the fire still blazing around them. Jon’s teeth marked her throat, her breast, cut into her bottom lip. His eyes seemed to consume the flames around them, a rush of powerful need to submit almost buckling her. Yet, he was searching, too, as they stumbled across the open grass, his nostrils narrowed, honing in on the gleam of shaggy white fur Dany had left behind that morning.

Jon scooped her up and settled her on his pelt. The scent made her dizzy, between Jon’s surging confidence and the circle of his ash-scented dragonflame still crackling around them. Against her spikes, the fur was soft and comforting. A cocoon of his smells wrapped around her. Familiarity that soothed some of her urgency as Jon draped his body over hers. He kissed her hard, purring and groaning as she scratched at his sides and back. Her hands settled on his shoulder spikes, gripping them as if she might tumble off the cliff just beyond the fire’s edge. His cock brushed her belly. Dany half-expected him to hook her knees over his biceps and thrust into her, but Jon surprised her.

“Shh, relax.” He sucked her bottom lip gently, gave it a few easy tugs, then nudged her cheek with his nose. “Let go, love. Give into what you want.”

She squirmed beneath him, fighting the shuddering instinct to let her thighs fall open. His voice was like a rumble, answering the volcano glowing in the distance. Still, he worked to soothe her. Fingers rubbed at her hip, his weight braced on his left forearm so that his hand could stroke her cheek. Jon kissed all over her face, murmuring encouragements, and still he hadn’t touched her. Not where her body was throbbing like her cunt was about to split open.

“ _Jon_ , _please_.”

“We will, _gods_ , we will, but…”

He rubbed his nose against one of her horns. His fingers brushed at her should spikes. For this final joining, they both had to be human from their toes to the crowns of their heads. Not conquering one or the other, but bonding as equals. Jon kissed her once more, stroked her cheek until she opened her eyes to meet his gaze.

“I love you.”

He didn’t ask for her submission nor her body. Not for all their months together, nor the dreams they’d shared since she was small. Dany sunk deeper into the soft, thick fur as her spikes retracted.

His grin make her skin prickle with lust. Another swift kiss was planted on her lips, and then Jon slid down her body. Inch by inch, his mouth mapped out her torso. Fluttering kisses over her collarbones, sharp bites to her breasts, teasing flicks and sucks at her nipples. Dany whimpered with each touch. Her heartbeat pounded deep in her head once more. When she wrapped a shaking hand around Jon’s horn, a surge jolted through her. His heartbeat raced through her, his gasp damp and warm on her belly.

“Fuck, Dany.” Jon jerked against her, scratched his teeth over her hip bone, right down to her cunt. She was aching and flushed, her lips already swollen with her arousal. “Gods, you smell so good.”

His greedy moan was muffled as he closed his mouth over her. Every rough suck made her head spin, her thighs already shaking as the flat of his tongue worked her stiff nub. Her body was spiralling beyond her control, desperate and aching to sink into pleasure. Dany cried out as she came, her voice wavering and high-pitched, fingers scratching at Jon’s scalp. He was relentless, however. Working her higher with each clenching and fluttering of her cunt. A deep, needy cramp tightened in her belly.

“Jon, _please_.”

He released her just before she edged into a second orgasm. Dany trembled. Tears pricked her eyes, a flush of heat so hot running over her that she could scarcely breathe. When Jon moved back up her body, her legs fell open, welcoming his hips into the cradle between her slick thighs. But still, he didn’t take her. Jon stroked his cock against her nub, grunting as he bit at her throat.

“Not… yet. _Fuck_.”

She slapped his ass, dug her nails in until he winced and blood was slick on her fingers. Yet her rage and need did not move him. Dany let out a whimpering sob, turned her head aside at the aching, desperate empty need clenching in her belly. He was there to soothe her, kissing her cheek, still rutting against her. Jon angled his head so one of his horns caught hold of hers.

“I know, I know,” Jon murmured as he peppered her cheek and ear and neck with kisses. “Shh, I’ll give you everything, I promise, but—”

_I have to give everything, too._

Her fingers released his ass, slid up his sides to cup his face. Fingerprints of blood dotted his cheeks as she steadied him above her. His horns were gone; his spikes, too. He was simply Jon, as he’d always been.

“I promise, I’m yours.”

Jon shuddered, pressed his forehead to hers. “And I’m yours,” he whispered. “Let me show you. Please, let me see you.”

Even with her eyes falling shut, Dany could picture the exact way her horns shrunk and disappeared. Her neck frills too, sunk out of sight until she was as vulnerable and exposed as she could ever be. Jon kissed her with a smile, shifted his hips, and buried himself in her heat. Dany cried out in delight at the abrupt fullness. She captured his waist with her hands, let Jon spread her legs high and wide. He set a hard, jarring pace. Every jab of his cock made her belly ache, her womb cramp.

Sunlight filtered through the clouds, cast a ruby glow over their dying flames. Dany’s chest seized as she fought for breath—her body locked up—and then another blissful cry left her. Jon groaned as she came around him, slowing his pace, but not stopping, not filling her with his seed. She was shaking beneath him, trying to find some solid part of him to hold on to, but her legs were pinned by his arms, her hands and his body were too slick from sweat and blood.

Instead, she cupped his face to keep his eyes locked with hers.

“Fuck me harder.”

His next thrust made her scream, pushing her legs back further, until her knees were pressed against her shoulders, lifting her ass up for his cock. Every jerk of his hips was bruising. Each meeting of their bodies felt like a shockwave shattering her spine. She held onto him the only way she could, cunt squeezing and clenching, trying to suck him deeper to stay buried against her womb.

Sweat stung her eyes. Her throat ached from how tense her neck was and how loud and hoarse her voice had become. She scratched his cheeks trying to stave off her pleasure, fighting to hold out for his. He was close, she could feel it. From the tightness in his jaw, to the driving force of his hips, to the way his eyes were fluttering, about to roll up in his head.

Between her cries, Dany managed to tug his face close enough to reach him.

“Let me see your wings.”

He obeyed without a thought, his arms swelling out into great leathery folds, a translucent canopy around her. Dany came then, thrashing against him, as tears ran down her face, her cunt going so tight she feared she might hurt him. Instead, Jon screamed with her, panting and jerking, as his sunk as deep as he could and spilled his seed inside her.

Fuzzy clots of warmth blanketed Dany at once. A hazy thud of her heartbeat mingling with Jon’s. Despite his usual exhaustion after they fucked, Jon was awake and alert above her. His wings had shrunk back to muscular arms, his cock still locked in her cunt. He kissed her sweaty forehead as another wave of heat and sleepiness settled over her. His palm slid between their slick bodies and rested on her navel.

“Get some sleep, love. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

“You, too.”

“Later. I’ll sleep later, shh.” He nudged at her much like he did in his direwolf skin, with his nose and lots of nuzzling. “Rest, Dany.”

The last thing she saw was Jon's peaceful face hovering just above hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure when the next update will be. 
> 
> In the next few weeks, I've got a Triple-Threat Birthday Road Trip planned (aka me and my two besties all have brithdays around the same time and are road tripping to celebrate) and Embers is next on the list. So, end of the month, maybe, but most likely early April. Embers will be next, for those who also read that, I'm just not sure when yet.
> 
> See you next time, dears! <3


	12. Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Dragons' Song returns! Happy May, dears!

Sharp scraping sounds brought Dany back to awareness. Her body was heavy with drowsiness. Patches of skin on her back and thighs prickled and throbbed dully from their mating. She lay on the charred earth, Jon’s soft familiar pelt cocooned around her. Overhead, the sky was an inky black, starless and glittering…

Dany squinted at the impenetrable darkness, confused. The fresh scent of rain clung to the air, crisp and refreshing and new. Small plumes of mist drifted along the ground. A bright spot some ten feet past her head, casting a haze of pale yellow light over her. It was a doorway. Ill-designed, more a harsh, uneven fracture in what seemed to be a wall of black rock than something painstakingly crafted. 

For a moment, she thought Jon had carried her back to their cave, but no. This spot was theirs. This blackened patch of earth and rock and life was where he’d given his heart to her. Where she’d given hers to him in return. Their scents pervaded the soil, an everlasting mark of their union. So long as this rumbling island existed, so would they. Every part of her felt it with such certainty that she trembled where she sat. No matter how many years or decades or centuries passed, this space would forever bear their mark. 

She jumped as the same scraping noise sounded to her left. Louder, more determined. Then the black rock cracked, a great wing claw piercing through. It sawed downward, then to the right, circling around until it met its beginning. A pale, thorny tail slid in through doorway, pressed against the cut circle of rock, and carefully lowered it to the ground. Safely out of distance of her. As gentle and quiet as a snowfall. Through the new window, Dany could see more hazy daylight, a glowing flash of white dragon scales and scarlet spikes.

Joy shivered through her at just a glimpse of Jon. Protecting them, guarding their place as she recovered from their mating. Even so, she was baffled by the structure he’d built around her. For all the vast Targaryen histories, nobody had ever mentioned such an experience.

“Jon?”

Her voice was soft and raspy from the day before. At once, his great eye appeared in the little window. He gave a snort, smoke streaming through the opening. His pupil was fat, left only a glowing ring of silver around the edges. 

In seconds, Jon rushed through the narrow doorway, in his human skin once more, still covered in dirt and ash and blood, as naked as he could ever be. He stumbled toward her, breathing hard, slick with sweat and grim. His dark eyes were as frantic and full as his dragon ones.

“Dany, love, you’re okay? You’re fine?”

He dropped to his knees at her side, scooped her face between his shaking hands. A stab of worry raced through her.

“Jon, I’m fine. We’re fine.”

She kissed him once, then again on each cheek as he checked her over. His pelt slipped off her shoulders. Dany followed the brushes of his trembling fingers. From the scrapes and cuts on her shoulders, the love bites on her breasts and belly and thighs. At last, his nose pressed against her navel.

_ I slept too long _ . 

Mama had warned her, of course. Every retelling of first matings had prepared her for Jon’s potential reactions once she succumbed to sleep. Mindless pacing, territorial guarding, frantic urges to protect and hide her. His persistent need to care for her, as their babe hopefully took root in her belly, would be at its strongest then. He would be a wild beast, controlled by instinct alone. And Jon…

Her sweet wolf had not been quite so ready for the aftermath. Prepared for every responsibility and task and a lifetime at her side, but his dragon skin was still fresh. If he lingered in that mind too long, Jon struggled to find his way back out.

“Shh, come here, love.”

Coaxing him to lay down took almost no effort. Jon was shivering still, the panic in his eyes glazing over as she draped his pelt over both of them. Dany curled into his chest, rubbed her fingers up and down the spikes along his spine. They flinched under her touch, still on high alert. Unless she was mistaken, he had not slept since the morning before the solstice when he’d flown off to hunt.

“There’s food,” Jon croaked. A shuddering breath ran through him. “In the corner. Apples, cheese, a couple fish I caught and roasted for you.”

Her belly rumbled at his words, but she remained with him. Lulling him to calmness until the tension drained out of him and he was limp and heavy nestled against her.

“Did you really build a house around me, Jon Targaryen?”

He hummed against her head. “Tower. It started raining and I… I couldn’t… needed to keep you  _ safe _ …”

Dany shushed him, her purr resonating from deep in her belly. From her womb and outward, her purr grew. Adoring and delighted and more content than she’d ever hoped to be. 

She knew then. Jon seemed to sense it, too.

His purr joined with hers, familiar at first, but soon a deep, soothing tone took over. It rose above hers, expanded over every inch of his body until Dany could feel its pleasure in her own bones. And then, slowly, it faded to his core, in pulsing bursts until the thunderous sound was pressed right against her navel. Jon nudged her cheek with one of his horns, his voice consumed her thoughts, seemed to speak from the depths of her own mind. 

_ I am yours _ .

Little jolts sparked over her skin. A wave of peaceful dizziness clouded her vision. Against her navel, Jon’s purr continued to grow, a strange heat coming with it. She couldn’t explain it, had no words or histories or stories to go off of from their ancestors, but his question was clear to her. His request for permission so obvious it could have been the whisper of his voice in her head once again.

_ And I am yours,  _ Dany thought in return, her hand slipping up to stroke his horn.

His purr answered. Threads of his song wound into her chest, vibrating through her ribcage, making her lungs catch on her next breath. As his purr settled inside her, sinking down, down, down through her abdomen to that molten place low in her belly, Dany smiled against his cheek.

Jon’s purr enveloped her womb, and the new fragile life now growing within it.

For how long they lay there, Dany could not say. Jon dozed off quickly, his purr still persistent and strong. Warmth spread through her body, glowing and golden, made her feel happy and safe and strong. No matter the hunger still lingering at the fringes of her mind, Dany couldn’t bring herself to pull away.

Not yet.

This moment, this feeling, this first connection between the three of them was too monumental.

She’d never heard of such an experience. Not in all of their family’s records nor in Uncle Aemon’s vast wisdoms. When a new pair mated on the solstice, whether a babe was created or not, they slept in shifts until they were strong enough to return home. Nobody have ever mentioned a bond being solidified in this way, to express such a trusting intimacy and protectiveness as the little hope of life inside her was surrounded by their contentment and love.

The sky outside had turned a bloody ruby by the time Jon’s purr subsided. Dany disentangled herself, left him asleep under his pelt. She ate from the supplies they’d brought, and devoured the fish Jon had caught and roasted. When she stepped outside of the tower, the sun was setting behind the pale smoke of the volcano. Along the volcano’s side, a huge gaping maw had replaced the slim cave entrance. It’s entire face had been altered, the rock torn apart, shards of obsidian sparkling all over the ground around her and in the new crater Jon had left on the volcano.

She stepped away from the new tower to examine it at a distance. Like the doorway, it was crude and hastily shaped. Circular, but tilted, its walls a melted hodge-podge of rock and obsidian. Several pointed spires and twisted curls of obsidian made up its crown.

Now in the daylight, Dany looked over herself, too. She felt a satiated, lovely mess. Dried blood coated her fingers, was wedged under her nails in congealed red-brown curves. Her skin was covered in brushstrokes of ash, Jon’s teeth marks a flushed red across her torso. One hip was bruised in the shape of his hand. Tenderness marked the flesh where her thighs and ass met. Trails of his seed ran down her thighs, flaking away in strips when she scratched them.

Bathing would do wonders, but the island’s perimeter was too steep to navigate a way down to the water on foot in the growing darkness. A flutter of panic expanded in her chest. No wings, no horns, no spikes for an entire year. She was trapped without Jon’s aide. 

He would rest for a time, had utterly exhausted himself during his sleepless two and a half days.

Dany hugged herself and hurried back into the tower. Lightheaded with a sudden clot of fear tightening her throat, she paced. Her human skin seemed horrendous in its inadequacies. Soft and frail and unaccustomed to surviving. For her entire memorable life, Dany had always been more.

_ No, not more. Just different. _

Her eyes fell on Jon, sleeping peacefully beneath his pale fur. If Jon could be strong without his scales for all those years, then she could do so now. 

Dany found her dress amongst their belongings, slipped it over her head and then returned to the outside to search for a water source as night gathered. It only took her a few moments of circling the tower to find a wide enough puddle. Ash swirled over the murky surface, soft mud squelched between her toes. Rainwater filled the wounded earth, just deep enough to cover her thighs when she striped and sat. The water was chilly, sent gooseflesh crawling over her arms and neck. Dany scrubbed her skin as clean as she could, then carried her dress back inside under the twilight. Anxiety trickled through her as she settled beside Jon once more, letting the cool night air dry her skin and slick hair.

She’d never felt so exposed, so raw and useless, at the mercy of nature and whatever happened upon her. Her moist skin itched with tightness, her spikes gliding restlessly beneath, trying to bubble up and poke free. Her horns, too, seemed eager to rejoin her visible body. Huddled beside Jon, her arms wrapped around her knees, Dany could only shut her eyes and purr. But her dragon, however pleased with yesterday’s union, was still thrashing to get out. To hunt and fly and be free—to bask in their union and sing her delight, to protect her from all of her worries.

“Dany?”

Her sob broke the silence. In the distance, the volcano gave a mighty roar that shook the ground. Jon’s arms scooped her up and pulled her to his chest. Again, that new deep, soothing purr was there, this time pressed against her lower back. It vibrated into her bones, curled up in her insides and danced with her dragon heart yearning to be set free. 

“Shh, love, I know. I know.”

And perhaps, in some ways, Jon could understand the terrible anxiousness doing cartwheels in her chest. The near violent urge to scratch the soft skin of her back with her nails until she’d cut each spike free. To dig the heels of her hands into her eyes until the pressure forced her horns to sprout from her temples. Afterall, he’d spent years with his dragon trapped inside him. Unknowing of his heritage, not understanding the haunting dreams or the ash in his scent or the desperate longing to be airborne.

His purr thrummed louder, wrapped around her just as his arms did. He held her to his chest, tucked his face against her neck. When his horn touched her cheek, Dany kissed it. Her dragon settled then, and instead Jon’s own exhaustion seeped into her. Sleepiness made her body heavy.

“Sorry, I just need to adjust, that’s all.”

Jon kissed her throat. “Don’t apologize. I’m here, whatever you need.”

“You’ve hardly slept in almost three days,” Dany reminded him. She could feel his weariness mingled with the soothing thunder of his purr swooping through her. “You need to rest. Recover.”

“We both do.”

They lay down on the charred ground, heads pillowed on his bunched up pelt. Jon’s belly rumbled with hunger almost at once.

“When was the last time you ate?”

She already knew the answer. That had been just another element of her education in a solstice mating. Jon hadn’t eaten or slept since he’d departed two mornings ago. He’d driven himself to the brink for her. To prove his worthiness, to please and protect her.

Dany collected their remaining food and brought it over to him. She lay down facing him, and slowly convinced him to eat. First small bites of hard bread and cheese, then nimbles of apples, and the last few fishbones that still had a few slivers of flesh. They slept after, waking to the harsh midday sunlight and the tremors of the ground as the volcano split the sky. 

Streams of lava oozed from the crater Jon had torn into its side, steaming and hissing as it dripped down into the sea. 

“I think it’s angry with me,” Jon mumbled. He rubbed his eyes as they stood in the doorway, watching the volcano’s violence. “When it started to rain on you… I got a bit crazy.”

His sheepish look only endeared him to her more. Dany hugged him close, then crinkled her nose.

“You need a bath.”

She dragged him to the nearby pool and forced him to sit, scrubbing his back and arms. Nail marks had left cuts on each of his ass cheeks, a reminder of her fury and passion. Jon hissed as he sat in the water as if he were trying to sit on a porcupine. They ate the last of their stores, spent the afternoon in the little tower cuddling and kissing and lazily fucking as Jon’s soothing purr encouraged the molten churning in her navel.

By the following dawn, Jon’s strength had returned. A brisk wind had come to their island overnight, ruffling Dany’s dress as they walked a short distance from the tower so that Jon could transform. He did so with a groaning roar. His scarlet spikes glinted in the pink dawn, his neck frills shivering. Jon nudged her with his snout, snorted once in joy against her belly. Silver eyes watched her in adoration as he lowered a wing for her to climb up.

Dany stumbled a bit the first time. Slipping over the leathery folds with the harness and almost empty bag. Only Jon’s pelt and a few wedges of obsidian remained inside it now. After fitting the harness about him, Dany settled on his back, grasped his largest spikes in her hands. He leapt toward the clouds, charging through the fluttering ash and sparks of fire until they’d parted through the smoky haze back to the sea. Their island vanished behind them. 

Journeying back home seemed to take no time at all. Lulled by the heat of Jon’s scales and the summer sun overhead, Dany was half asleep when they arrived, dazed and content. Jon sang as he circled the three great hills, descending slowly until his claws clattered onto the wide balcony of Aegon’s Hill. Her mother appeared in a rush of pale hair and wispy red skirts.

“Daenerys! Oh, Jon!”

He waited for her to unhook the harness and climb down before Jon shifted to his human skin. By then Rhaegar was in the sky overhead, singing his joy. Her brother landed as Rhaella pulled Dany into her arms.

“Oh, my sweet girl. Let me look at you.” Rhaella kissed her cheeks, took her face in hand, then finally, rested a tentative hand on Dany’s flat belly. “No horns or spikes. Do you think—”

Rhaegar swooped in to hug each of them, ruffling Jon’s hair as he looked his son over.

“Gods, boy, am I glad to see you.” Jon made a face as his father kissed him, but Dany could sense his happiness like a persistent echo of his purr. “How’d it go?”

“Well, clearly,” Uncle Aemon’s voice answered from the doorway. “And what’s this of no horns? You think you’ve conceived?”

Dany nodded as her mother teared up. “Yes.”

They all retired to the table inside. Jon and Dany devoured the feast set before them. As they ate the rest of the family watched them, smiling and tearful, but impatient, too. When she finally paused for breath, Rhaella clasped Dany’s hand.

“I’m glad the solstice went well,” Rhaella said. She gave Jon a watery smile. “A new pair of mated dragons. It’s just so…”

“Wonderful,” Rhaegar finished. He was grinning, too, but there was a hesitancy in his expression. “It’s still too early to tell if… well, if you conceived, but…”

“We did.”

Jon’s firm tone left no room to argue. Rhaella and Rhaegar exchanged a look, one that Dany understood despite her own certainty. Conception was delicate for dragons. Detecting a pregnancy took many months for most, for the babe to take root and settle, then to swell for the last half year. Even her scent wouldn’t clue anyone in. The babe’s scent would be buried beneath her own, wouldn’t be noticeable until a few weeks before the birth, if at all.

“Jon, I know you both want this,” Rhaegar began, “but with dragons, it’s different than wolves. It’ll be months before we can be certain.”

“No, I…  _ we _ felt it.” Jon’s cheerful expression darkened, and his sharp prickle of annoyance curled through Dany’s thoughts as if it were her own. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life, Papa.”

Again, Rhaegar and Rhaella glanced at one another. Jon’s frown deepened.

“Don’t doubt me. When Dany woke, when we held each other after—”

Like her, Jon seemed unable to properly voice the intimacy they’d experienced. The way their purrs had reached deep into her belly and sealed around the fragile little life they’d placed there.

Rhaegar tried for gentleness. “First matings can be overwhelming. The thoughts and feelings, the sensations and excitement. That may be all you felt, son. We just want you to be prepared for—”

“It  _ wasn’t _ .”

Jon’s voice could have broken steel. She’d never heard him raise his voice before, but her lover—her mate’s—defense brought a warm shudder of arousal to her. Dany slipped her hand from her mother’s grasp and took Jon’s instead.

“Jon’s right,” Dany said, as his dark eyes glinted. “That moment when I first woke… I can’t explain it either. But I  _ knew _ . And Jon… his purr…”

While Rhaegar and Rhaella seemed unconvinced, Uncle Aemon chuckled.

“Trust their bond,” he said. “If Jon and Daenerys say they conceived, then I will believe their instincts. Besides, it will be wonderful to have a little dragon around again. No matter how long it may take.”

 

* * *

 

Each night Dany was lulled to sleep by the warm press of Jon’s belly against her back or navel. His purr sang her to sleep, whisked her off to dreams of her wings skimming through the hot summer air and their mating song swirling through the towering clouds. In the mornings, her belly pulsed with remnants of Jon’s song when she woke him to fuck and cuddle and talk.

For a fortnight, their days started and ended the same. Wrapped in the glow of their new bond, experiencing the other’s body as their minds began to join, too. Dany spoke only to her mother of the solstice. Of Jon’s confidence and dance, the fire and blood that had marked the sun’s longest day. And moreso, of the morning after, and their tender embrace and Jon’s strange new purr.

“No, your father never did anything of that nature,” Rhaella confirmed, as they sat under a gleaming sun on the balcony. Overhead, Jon twirled through the cumulus clouds, casting shadows over their white plumes. “Jon is not the same as us, of course. He’s a direwolf, too. But a purr…”

It was distinctly a dragon trait. Their puzzlement yielded no answer, though Dany was as calm as if she were soaring high above at Jon’s side. His new purr seemed to sooth her dragon’s urges as much as it brought her happiness. She wished to keep it with her for the rest of her life.

A month after their mating, however, Dany woke with a horrified jolt. Her head was heavier than it had been in weeks, her senses sharper. She pulled herself from the thunder of Jon’s steady purr and sat up. Tears burned her eyes as she reached up to find her horns returned. 

“No, no, no, no.”

She threw Jon’s pelt aside, exposing their naked flesh to the stuffy morning. As Dany checked her thighs for blood, Jon stirred beside her.

“Dany?”

Her belly felt as pleasant and warm as the night before. No blood marked the bedding or her thighs. Cramps didn’t send spasms of pain through her belly. Still, her panic was uncontrollable.

“J-Jon, my horns. They’re—”

He bolted upright just as she had, wide awake. Nervous energy seemed to swell between them as Jon wrapped a firm arm around her chest.

“Relax, shh, you’re okay. We’re all okay.”

“But if my  _ horns _ —”

“Let me check, love.” 

Jon helped her lay back down, her spine sinking into the soft featherbed. Her spikes were still absent, but if her horns had returned, slipped free while she slept, then surely…

“Shh, don’t panic.” 

Jon kissed her cheek and brushed away her tears, then crawled over her, sliding down until his nose was touching her navel. He took several slow sniffs that did little to calm her frantic heart, the burning at the corners of her eyes.

“Jon, that won’t help.” She made to shove his face aside. “It’s too early to scent them!”

But he persisted, kissing her knuckles when she made to push his head away. He guided her hands to his horns, then inhaled once more. A haze clouded her tearful panic, Jon’s senses slipping into hers. Lemony brimstone burst sharp in her nose, and a lingering touch of Jon’s ash. But a third scent cut through theirs, cradled in the weirwood sap that hung like a musk around the room. Charred wood hit her nostrils. The flaking crispness of solidifying lava flows. 

Something new.  _ Someone _ new remained with them.

Still hovering over her, Jon slipped his pelt over his back and shifted to his direwolf skin. Ghost sniffed her all over, Dany’s fingers knotted into the soft fur of his cheeks, her heart rate slowing as their little ones’ scents grew more robust with each inhale.

Even with Ghost’s snout it was hard to detect that fragile newness, but just the hints of it relaxed Dany once again. She couldn’t understand it. Everything she had ever been taught spoke against the assurances Jon’s senses found.

“See? They’re fine, love.” Jon nipped her on the belly, a man once again. He slid up the bed to kiss her, then curled up beside her. With his pelt tucked around her, and Jon’s steady deep voice whispering sweet words, Dany sunk back to sleep.

When she woke next, beams of hot daylight cast bars over their bed. Sweat clung to her back, made the bedding stick to her skin. Jon was gone, but his pelt remained with her, his ashy musk still strong in the air. He’d not been gone long.

“Dany? Here, dear, I made this for you a-after… well, after…”

Rhaella stood in the doorway, all her radiant, hopeful smiles of the past month vanished. Her eyes locked on Dany’s horns as she stepped closer, a tray in hand, balancing a pair of tea cups.

“It’ll help for the shock,” Rhaella said as she sat on the bed at Dany’s knees. “And for any lingering pains if… there’s always next year, Daenerys.”

“No.”

She thought the baby was lost. Or had never existed. Dany placed a protective hand over her navel, to the golden warmth of Jon’s nightly purr that still lingered in her very skin.

“Dany, I know how hard it is to accept, but your horns, dear. They’re the proof. They wouldn’t be visible if you were—”

“Jon could smell them.  _ I _ could smell them through  _ him _ .”

Her mother’s placating attitude only riled Dany further. She climbed from the bed away from Rhaella, wrapping Jon’s pelt around her despite the summer heat.

“Daenerys, you know it’s far too early to detect a scent. It takes  _ months _ , if at all.”

“No, it doesn't. I can’t explain it, okay? But I  _ trust _ Jon. I know what we felt. They’re still here,” Dany said, placing a soft hand over her belly. “Charred wood and the silvery flakes of cooling lava. Together, growing inside me.”

“That was your bond forming, that’s all. Smells from the island where you mated. It’s different for each couple, but the power of it, when you first experience it… Dany, it can be confusing. It’s a lot to take in at once.”

“This isn’t  _ that _ .”

“Dear, please, you’ve been through a lot. Just have the tea, it will help calm—”

Dany swiped the offered cup aside. It shattered on the floor, left a dark splash across the stone. She fled before her mother could scold her or argue further. Anger tightened her chest, flooded her mouth like a stream of fire searing up her throat. A glance of the Red Tower flashed through her mind, its red stones wavering in the streamy summer air. The vantage point was high above, the air buffeted by pale wings.

Jon was on the balcony when she rushed outside, his wing already lowered for her to climb onto his back. Together, they soared high into the clouds and south across the bay, left Rhaella’s dejected pessimism behind. Dany clung to his spikes, pressed her forehead to his molten scales. Anger stirred inside him, too, a watery image of Rhaegar’s doubtful face. She let the soft winds take her fury and stubbornness until she was left with only certainty. 

When Jon landed on Uncle Aemon’s balcony, a glowing orange sun was setting against the western hills. 

“I don’t care what they say,” Jon told her, a welcome protectiveness brightening his eyes. “They’re just fine. Our little ones are safe.”

Dany yanked his lips to hers, backed him right up to the stone wall until their lust was like fire crisping their skin. She claimed him then, pushed him down onto the balcony in the fading sunlight, rode him hard and urgent until he spilled inside her. Shameless, they took enough time to calm themselves before heading inside.

Uncle Aemon awaited them in the dim dining room, a spread of food beside him, his hands folded over his belly. He smiled at the sounds of their footsteps.

“Your parents have been telling interesting tales.”

Jon glowered, his spikes bristled. Dany stopped before she sat down, ready to retreat.

“They’re wrong,” Dany told him. “Whatever they think, I’m still pregnant. Horns or no horns.”

As Jon’s arm settled around her waist, protective and firm, Uncle Aemon’s smile only widened. Jon’s purr rumbled up, spread across the room in a rush of fierce anger.

“My dear boy, relax, I’m no threat.” Uncle Aemon waved a hand toward the table, and slowly, as Jon’s purr quieted, he and Dany sat. “There now, eat, build your strength. Especially, you, Daenerys. Your little one needs everything it can get, these first months.”

“You believe us then?” Jon scooped up a hunk of bread and ripped a piece off. “Papa… I asked him,” he admitted. “This morning after I got up, I thought he’d have some ideas, but he just… gods, he talked to me like I was an  _ infant _ . Like I didn’t know the difference between what’s pretend and what’s right _ here _ .”

His hand settled on Dany’s belly once more.

“Sometimes, people are blinded by their own pasts,” Uncle Aemon said gently. “But tell me the rest. Your horns have returned, Daenerys?”

She spent the rest of the meal explaining their solstice together. From Jon’s departure to their fiery union to that very morning when they’d woken to her horns. Uncle Aemon listened as they talked him through the experience, their new bond and all of its sudden, strange intricacies. Hearing each other’s thoughts and love, sharing senses and emotions beyond the normal, simple hints most dragons could feel when they were close.

“And was there anything at odds when you joined physically? Spikes or horns present perhaps?”

Jon glanced at her then, his eyes widening. “Well, there was one moment, Uncle. At the end, when we were, um… well, we were both about to…”

Her blush could have scalded a dragon’s skin off. “I asked to see Jon’s wings. I  _ needed _ to see them, and they were out. Only for a few moments as we…”

“Finished,” Jon muttered uncomfortably. “I couldn’t have controlled it if I’d had the thought to spare for trying.”

Understanding wrinkled the deep lines of Uncle Aemon’s face. “Perhaps… it’s never happened before, but perhaps…”

“But it has,” Dany reminded him. “Every failed solstice in the old histories was because one of their dragons came to life when they tried to conceive.”

“And yet, so much of you two is at odds with our family’s history.”

Dany leaned into Jon, grasped his arm against her chest. “There’s nothing odd about us. About Jon. He’s everything he ought to be.”

“Am I? I mean, was I too new to my dragon, Uncle? Or is it because of my wolf skin maybe?”

Uncle Aemon considered him in silence for a moment. “Neither or both, but each is unlikely, I think. A dragon is a dragon, no matter their size or familiarity with their second skin. But you two, unlike every other pair of mated dragons,  _ chose _ each other. You’ve been bonded by dreams and hearts and love unlike any others. And I think—I  _ hope _ —that is the necessary difference. Nobody forced or demanded a union between you two. You found each other for love. Gave your hearts and souls in a way our ancestors did not.”

“Of course we love each other,” Jon said. “But how does that—”

“As I said, it’s not happened before,” Uncle Aemon admitted, but he seemed more curious than troubled. “For centuries our ancestors recorded their scales and sizes, failed solstices, successful ones. Most who have read them see only records, but I’ve studied them for so long, my dears. Since I was a boy half your age, I read through them all, and every mating, successful or not, every pair was a decision of logic, of necessity to continue our bloodline. Not one was ever for love.”

“But… why? Just to keep dragons alive? With how destructive we can be, most especially in large numbers.” Dany tried to think of all she’d ever been taught, but as far as she could recall, Uncle Aemon was right. “Why not branch out, find love, make better lives?”

“We may never know, I’m afraid. Guesswork is all we have.”

“And you have some guesses?” Jon kissed her horn and held her close. 

“Some, each more unlikely, I imagine, but it caught me one day, not long after you arrived, Jon. Listening to you two together, feeling the bond and the strength of your love, and then your shared fire dream. I think all those centuries, our ancestors were searching for an easier way. The right way to be a dragon. No other shifter carries the same burdens as our kind, the same delicate babes and difficulties with conception. And perhaps, it’s all to do with the magic of our kind,” Uncle Aemon decided, as he reached across the table and rested his shaky hand over their joined one. “Or perhaps, you two are the truth of us. Perhaps love was always the best way.”

Dany felt dazed at his words, hopeful and uncertain at the weight of Uncle Aemon’s assumptions. Beside her, Jon didn’t seem convinced either.

“That’s why the babes are safe despite Dany’s horns?”

Uncle Aemon squeezed their join hands. “That is my hope. You two, together, are our liberation. The path forward from what might have been our end.”

 

* * *

 

Uncle Aemon’s confession was a great weight on their new union. Dany and Jon sat up long into the night, in Jon’s chamber in Visenya’s Hill, discussing everything they’d heard. From her horns to his purr to the appearance of his wings when they’d fucked on the charred earth, they wrote it all down. Dates were added, as best they could remember.

“Do you think he’s right?”

Dany leaned back against him, tucked between his thighs, sleepy as soon as his soothing purr began to brush her skin.

“Something’s different,” Jon admitted. His hands rested on her belly, adjusted how their bodies were aligned, sitting up against the headboard. “And this…” He shuddered as his stomach and her lower back lined up, the heat of his purr sealing them together. “Gods, it makes me dizzy every night. Tired, too, but I think I’d claw my skin off if I spent even one night away from you, unable to… to…”

“Nurture.” The word sprung to her mind as a particularly strong vibration spread through her. “It’s good for them. For me, too. I’ve never slept so good.”

“Them.” Jon kissed her neck, his smile impossible to miss in the joy of his tone. “Wait until they have not one, but  _ two _ little dragons to dote on.”

“Or two little wolves.”

She felt his smile vanish against her skin, his chin resting on her shoulder. Dany wound their hands together over her belly, the sharp tang of weirwood sap spreading like a creeping fog around them.

“When do you want to go north?”

Jon startled so bad, their midsections were wrenched apart. His golden warmth faded, left him wincing and rubbing his hard stomach. Dany glanced back at the hiss of pain and was horrified to see Jon’s abdomen was bright red and steaming.

“Jon, what—”

He eased her lower back into place against his boiling skin instead of answering. At once, his purr poured back into her, from ribs to hip bones, to the warmth of her core. Still breathing deep, Jon rested his forehead on her shoulder and didn’t answer for a long time. Dany stayed in place, frightened, guilty, grateful, a tangled mass of questions.

“It’s okay, I’m fine. That’s never…”

“Is it like that every night?”

“No,” Jon assured her. “I mean, its exhausting some nights, if I’m already really tired, but its never hurt. We broke apart and… I think that’s all it was.”

“Let’s not test that theory,” Dany decided as she leaned back against him fully. “I don’t want you hurt for me.”

“Or you for me. And this… I can’t explain why, but it makes it easier for you, doesn’t it? Lets your horns out, maybe your spikes or neck frills, too.”

_ It makes them stronger _ .

So much of their last month was uncharted lands, but Dany believed that with every ounce of herself. Their two little ones were already thriving. Basking in her and Jon’s love and commitment, nestled safe in their joined purrs every night while they grew. Already, their scents were distinct to Jon’s nose. No other dragons had ever achieved that.

“So when do you want to go north, love? To see your pack? Your mother?”

Jon took a moment in answering. “How about in the autumn? Once we’re sure you and the babes are okay, and maybe… maybe Papa will go with us. She’d love to see him again.”

“And make you a big brother?”

He laughed. “Might be too late for that, but by then, you’ll be showing. Nobody can doubt us then. By dragon flight, it shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

Excitement raced through her. Beneath their joined hands, her belly pulsed in time with Jon’s molten purr.

“I can’t wait. And you, Jon Targaryen, better not shy away from fucking me however I see fit. No matter how big I get.”

“As if I could ever keep my hands off you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, this one is a shorter story than Embers (by like, a LOT, lol) so, with any luck and enough free time for writing, I maybe just hash it out before July ends. We'll see. I know where it's all going, its just a matter of finding the time.
> 
> So thank you for returning to this story and for sticking around and waiting! And know that, no matter what the TV show does, I'll still be here writing TDS and Embers. With some other ideas after that, I hope. Cause the TV show right now... oof. Just OOF.
> 
> Next week is Embers! :)


	13. The Journey North

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesdaaaay!
> 
> Shame, isn't it, how GOT was canceled after season 7? Oh, well. That's what fanfiction is for, so onward!

Summer passed in a lustful daze. 

Jon basked in the sweltering heat, spent his afternoons in his dragon skin, floating on the slate gray waters of the bay, Dany relaxing on his back tucked safe between his spikes. They toured half the south together while the days were long. Discovered the ruins of Summerhall and the harsh sands beyond the rusted red mountains. Dany had never felt happier. She smiled from the moment she woke with the fading rumbles of his purr until she drifted off against him. Satiated, sweaty, joyous from their nightly unions.

Every day seemed a gift that Jon had not dared to dream up.

And every night, Jon reconnected to the two tiny pulses of life growing in Dany’s womb. He still struggled to place words on his newfound instinct. Nurture purring was Dany’s name for it. The raw heat of his fire expanded through himself, breaking every boundary with the sheer force of his love. He built safety around them, chased off the winds that tried to whip up a choppy tide. Each night brought them closer. Allowed their minds to meld like their bodies did, until her thoughts slipped into his own. 

All the symptoms their family had prepared them for were absent. No bursts of rage or tears, no sickness, not even that frantic scratching at the soft skin of her back—of her dragon screaming to be set free. Since that first day, that first soothing purr, Dany had become a brilliant star to brighten each night. Contentment hummed over her skin, only waning in their last hours before sleep. So long as Jon held her, his purr melting right into her core, then her exultant joy remained.

Dany was thriving. 

Yet despite their insistence of success, Rhaella and Rhaegar remained unconvinced. Uncle Aemon rebuking them, only brought more suspicion. As summer drifted past, rolling in storms that shook their hills and pierced their skies with lightning, Jon found himself avoiding his father more and more. Nothing could convince Rhaegar of the truth Jon could smell and feel. With each moon that passed, Rhaegar’s doubts hardened into a distressed urgency.

“Her horns are back, Jon. And her neck frills, too,” Rhaegar reminded him, on a humid morning almost three moons after the summer solstice. He paced before Jon in the bowels of Rhaenys’s hill. “A dragon pregnancy doesn’t allow any shifting.  _ None _ of it. No horns. No spikes.  _ Nothing _ .”

“Apparently it does. Maybe our family’s been doing something wrong.” 

“For  _ centuries? _ Jon, none of the signs are present. I  _ know _ you both want this, but dragon pregnancies are volatile. Stability is so difficult to maintain that most don’t survive. That’s been true since the beginning.” 

Jon crossed his arms, gazed around at the hive-like interior of his father’s home. Once, they’d rested in this very spot together, helping him find his voice again. “Has it? We don’t have records of the first dragon shifters. We’re the only magical race of shifters as far as we know. We have no facts, only guesses. Dany’s pregnant. I’ve never been more certain of anything. Uncle Aemon believes us, so why can’t you?”

Rhaegar gritted his teeth, made a noise of frustration. “Jon, please. I am trying to be sensible about this. Watching you both have this dream inevitably crushed is unbearable.”

“Then try trusting  _ my _ senses. I know what I can smell, what I  _ feel _ every damn night.”

“I don’t know what that purr is,” Rhaegar snapped. “None of us do. It may very well just be your dragon and wolf skins molding into something new.  _ Please _ , be rational.”

“Why should I when my own father won’t trust me?”

Jon left for Uncle Aemon’s cool chambers then, rejoined him and Dany amongst their pile of scrolls and books. As the summer’s sweltering heat reached its peak, Dany had been spending more time inside, studying every word their ancestors had left behind. Searching for answers, with little success. She could sense his anger, bristled slightly as it spread across the room, his pelt snug around her shoulders.

_ “—at the Wall, the world seemed to fall away. Crossing as a woman was simple a year ago, but as Silverwing, fear become such a frenzy in my mind that I dared not. Even this year, as I stand here at the tunnel entrance beneath the looming weight of ice, the new little dragon in my belly becomes a writhing pulse of terror. Cold is an enemy I dare not cross. _ ”

As Dany let the scroll drop onto the pile to her left, Jon slid into the cozy armchair with her. His kiss was rather rough, and more than a little needy.

“What’s that you’re reading?”

“Histories from our ancestors,” Uncle Aemon said. Across the table, his eyes were shut, his pale horns lined with widening lengths of violet. “Alysanne lived a long time ago, but she left behind the longest diaries about her many pregnancies. Most did not survive to be birthed, I’m afraid.”

“And still no mention of anything like us?”

“No.” Dany tucked herself against him and yawned. “But she did visit the Wall several times.”

“Strange reactions to it,” Uncle Aemon mumbled. “Curious considering your own experiences, Jon, and this dragon that stalked you north of it.”

Jon shivered at his uncle’s words. A rush of vibrant green fire filled his vision, but as soon as Dany’s hand rubbed his neck frill, it was gone. 

“I never felt weird about going under it,” Jon told them, frowning. “I mean, we passed through as humans, so maybe that’s why. Dragonflame had been there, though, at Castle Black. I could feel its heat where it had burned one of the towers like a scar. The smell… I’ll never forget it. Like fire gone to rust. When I mentioned a dragon having been there, my uncle was terrified.”

For the first time since Jon’s arrival in the south, Uncle Aemon’s voice trembled. Much like Uncle Benjen had that autumn day so long ago, a touch of fear was unmistakable.

“Gone to rust? Are you certain, Jon?” 

“I never forget a smell.”

Dany’s jolt of surprise shot through Jon like a javelin. He curled himself tight against her, rested a firm hand over her still flat belly. The only commonality between her pregnancy and their ancestors’ seemed to be that persistent flatness in the early months. Almost three months had passed since the solstice, Dany’s horns and neck frills returning, her face a continuous flush of soft pink that glowed like the dawn. If her belly’s growth fell in line with their records, she would grow in fits and bursts throughout autumn slowing as the depths of winter arrived. Jon, however, had his doubts. Something was inherently different, so absolute he could smell it in their very blood. Their greatest season was ending and their trip north to Winterfell on the horizon. Together, they would prove all the histories wrong.

“That’s father.” Dany’s voice was small. “We’ve gone over all of our records since the solstice and that’s his scent you described. Fire gone to rust.”

She climbed from the chair, dug through the heaps and stacks until she found a large, thick tomb Jon had become quite familiar with since his first shift to his dragon skin. Dany flipped through the thin, worn pages, back and back, closer to their own entries. Finally, she stopped on the pages devoted to her parents.

_ Aerys Targaryen, gray-scaled and obsidian horns. Cerulean eyes to match his fire. Scent of fire gone to rust. _

“Dany—”

“It’s him. It has to be.”

“That dragon’s fire was green, his eyes, too.” Jon lifted his scarred hand from her belly, set it on the book beside hers. “He burned me, remember? Would have done far worse given the chance. How could his eyes and fire change?”

“Who else is left, Jon? And we… he did terrible things, yes, but if it is him, maybe we can bring him back somehow. Help him. Or put him to rest, finally.”

“No.”

The sudden conviction in Uncle Aemon’s voice silenced them both. His milky eyes had opened, his jaw trembling as he glowered into nothingness.

“You both are too vital to our future, are too precious to all of us, to take such risks. Whatever Aerys has become, Daenerys, he’s lost now. Beyond the Wall or elsewhere. The only way you and Jon and your sweet little ones will remain safe is if he remains apart.”

“But—”

“Have you forgotten what Aerys did to Rhaegar? What he tried to do to Jon’s mother? I will not sit idle while you talk of walking into a repeat of that, or worse,” Uncle Aemon said. He found their hands still pressing the old book flat and though his arms shook, his grip was iron. “Promise me, you will not seek him out. Protect yourselves and our family— _ your _ new family only just beginning.”

Dany’s lip trembled, her eyes fierce and troubled as she looked at Jon.

_ He’s right, love. For now, at least, we are all that matters. _

She didn’t seem to like that, but her free hand closed over her belly.

_ For them. And us then. _

“We promise,” Jon and Dany said together, and Uncle Aemon breathed a sigh of relief.

 

* * *

 

Jon slept badly that night, his belly molten as his nurturing purr glided over Dany’s pliant body, seeped into her womb, swelling with heat and life. Fog chased him through darkness, descended from above and below, tangled him upside down and rightside up until he was tumbling through chilled fog that turned to boiling steam. Lashes of green dragonflame spiraled out of the blackness, racing to meet him, slashing into his right hand—

He woke to the grayness of pre-dawn, his breaths coming in panicked bursts. His right hand seared and smoked where it rested on the bedding. Around them, the heady scent of charred ice was enough to make Jon dizzy. Dany, at least, slept on in peace. Her belly still pressed to his, the remaining heat of his purr pulsing between them. Jon raised his hand into the air, examined the waxy burn scars. Nothing was different, the smoking skin might have been a figment of his dream, and yet…

When he clenched his fist, Jon could still feel the flame.

A soft hum against his chest brought him back to the present. Dany shifted in his arms, tucked herself closer, and as she did, Jon caught his first glimpse of her spikes. Vibrant and red, curling lovingly at the warm morning air.

Three moons since the solstice.

Uncle Aemon’s predictions had been right.

After Dany’s horns had returned to mark the first month, and then her neck frills to start the second, they’d wondered if her spikes might return next.

Jon smiled, found her largest spike along her spine and gave it a gentle scratch. Dany’s purr roared to life at once, met his in a whirlwind of euphoria. 

From the corner of the room, Uncle Aemon stirred in his armchair. He’d sat vigil through the night, awaiting the proof they’d all expected.

“They’re back?”

Jon grunted in answer, grinned as Dany’s bleary eyes opened. Her hair rumpled from sleep, her face as radiant as the sun.

“Jon?  _ Oh _ .”

She jerked against him, her eyes drifting shut as he scratch her spike again. He opened his mouth to speak, but with his nurturing purr still rumbling, getting words out was difficult. As Uncle Aemon made his slow way to his feet, someone knocked on the door. Rhaella’s voice called through the wood.

“Jon? Daenerys? Rhaegar and I were hoping to have breakfast with you both this morning.” She sounded quite upset, but determined, even as Uncle Aemon lumbered over to the door. “I know how hard this can be, and… Uncle?”

Jon could caught a glimpse of her surprised face as Uncle Aemon opened the door, his father in shadow just behind her, before he shut his eyes. Drowsiness washed over him, Dany’s purr building like the approach of a great storm. His own purr flushed such a robust heat through him that sweat began to break out over his back, trickling between his spikes. Dany’s arm curled around him, pressing him close, her face tucked to his throat. From what seemed to be very far off, he heard his father’s anxious voice.

“Jon? What’s wrong? His purr—Uncle, what’s happened? This is— _ Mother!” _

A thump sounded from behind Jon, jostled his and Dany’s senses enough to break the bonding moment. The last of his purr faded, Dany’s cut off mid-rumble. They sat up together and found Rhaegar helping Rhaella over to the armchair Uncle Aemon had slept in.

“I’m fine. It’s okay. I only—the feel of it,  _ gods _ .”

Dany and Jon scrambled out of bed, dressed in their night clothes, joined their parents in the corner. Rhaella was flushed, her face pebbled with sweat, cheeks a glowing ruby. She trembled as Rhaegar felt her forehead.

“Grandmother?”

Jon reached for her, but Rhaella knocked his hand aside. Just that simple brush made Jon’s skin turn to flame. He understood then, in a way that unsettled him deeply. She could feel the strength of his nurturing purr, the adamant pull of it that lulled Dany to sleep each night. Rhaella could feel it—feel their little ones—though Rhaegar and Uncle Aemon could not.

Rhaella accepted Dany’s touch, Uncle Aemon’s and Rhaegar’s without incident. She offered Jon a watery smile, overcome with disbelieving hope.

“I doubted you both,” she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, Dany, Jon, I’m sorry. I couldn’t bare the thought of you both being crushed and— _ gods _ , that purr, Jon. Even a few feet away, I felt it in my bones. Have never felt so safe and loved.”

“Mother, what are you talking about?” Rhaegar’s face betrayed his confusion and worry. He glanced at Jon and Dany, then Uncle Aemon’s pleasant smile. “It sounds odd, yes, but we already discussed this. They didn’t—”

“They did,” Rhaella corrected. She wiped her eyes, cupped Dany’s cheek. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

As mother and daughter embraced, Rhaegar took a seat on the foot of the bed. Bewilderment lined his face. Uncle Aemon settled beside him, gave him a pat on the thigh. Jon let Rhaella hug him next, her tears warm on his shoulder. But his father remained undeterred, clearly seemed to think each of them were losing their sanity.

“Is this just a long-term joke you four have been planning? Because it isn’t funny.”

Rhaella snorted as she dabbed at her eyes. “No, of course not. Rhaegar, I felt it. Jon’s purr. What it means, how it resonates, the little ones they’re binding their love around. This is real.”

“It’s just a purr,” Rhaegar insisted. “Why it sounds like  _ that _ is just… it’s only…”

“Let me try showing you.”

Everyone looked to Jon, but a spark of inspiration had hit him. He took Dany’s hand, sat her down on the bed beside his father. Rhaegar’s jaw tightened, as if he were steeling himself for another unsolvable argument. Jon kneeled before her, his face parallel to her belly.

“Love, pass me my pelt.”

Dany leaned back and pulled it from the rumpled bedding, settinged it snug and safe around his shoulders. Jon yanked Rhaegar’s wavering hand toward him and placed it on his horn.

“ _ Trust _ me. Trust us.”

Hesitancy lined Rhaegar’s face, deepened the creases that years of regret and stress and misery had carved. But when Jon released his wrist, his father’s hand latched on tight to his left horn, his rosewater scent seeped into Jon, in slow drips and then a steady stream. Jon shut his eyes, dipped his head to Dany’s belly, and breathed. Rhaegar’s inhale was so sharp he almost cracked Jon’s horn with the strength of his grip.

But their babes were thriving. Their scents still faint, but stronger than two months ago. The sharpness of charred wood sparking on a fire. The coolness of lava flows hardening, then flaking as their innards burst free. Something else had begun to mix in, a brush of spring like fresh grass and ripening strawberries.

Jon shifted to Ghost as his father’s hand shook, his fingers clutching Jon’s shaggy fur as he sniffed and sniffed, let the scents of their little ones wash over each of them. For Rhaella soon joined them, her hand rubbing his soft, pale ear. Uncle Aemon, too, allowed himself a few moments of joy to share what, so far, only Jon’s nose could detect.

“They’re…” Rhaegar mouthed wordlessly. Like Rhaella, the realization had reduced him to tears. “Gods, twins. Two new dragons.”

Jon returned to his human skin, raised himself up and kissed Dany’s brilliant smile.

 

* * *

 

Their unity survived only a fortnight. Another chasm seemed unavoidable once Jon and Dany announced their plans to journey north before the winter solstice. While Uncle Aemon and Rhaella were supportive despite their concerns, Rhaegar was another matter. He blanched at the idea of Jon and Dany leaving, and seemed blinded by panic when Jon’s voiced his hopes as autumn’s fiery changes turned the forests and hillside red and orange and gold.

“She’ll want to see you,” Jon insisted. “Mama loves you. Thinking you were dead all these years devastated her. It took my damn dragon skin almost ripping me apart for her to finally tell me everything. Please, come north with us. Come see her.”

“Jon, your mother and I… its been so long. Everything has changed.”

“And you’re still bonded mates,” Jon reminded him. “She never moved on either. Dragons mate for all their lives, and you’re still here just as she is.”

Panic flooded Rhaegar’s dark eyes. He seemed to shrivel before Jon, like a grape rushing to become a raisin. But worse was the guilt Jon could sense, the fathoms deep crater of horror and shame Rhaegar carried, but that he so rarely allowed to be noticed.

“You didn’t know, Papa. She didn’t either. Nobody did. Mama—Lyanna—loves you still. Even if you two don’t go back to what you were before, don’t you owe it to each other to reunite and see where you stand?”

“I…” Rhaegar swallowed several times. “We cannot leave Uncle Aemon alone. Someone needs to stay behind.”

“ _ Grandmother _ is staying behind,” Jon snapped, an edge creeping into his voice. “It’s only a few days journey to Winterfell. Having you with us will be safer. My mother— _ your _ mate—deserves to hear the truth from you. Not me.”

Several moments passed before Rhaegar answered, but his reply left Jon with more cold doubts than hopes.

“I’ll think about it, Jon.”

 

* * *

 

Outside their cozy hills, the air grew colder, the winds whipped the flaming leaves from the forests nearby, decorating the balconies in fiery mosaics. Jon and Dany prepared for their journey north, plotted out where to stop their first night, what to bring, spent a whole week perusing Rhaella’s old dresses and tunics from when she’d been pregnant to make sure Dany would still have clothing as the months progressed. 

Already, Dany’s belly had changed since her spikes returned. A month into autumn, four months since they’d conceived, a noticeable swell had begun to appear, stretching the fabric of her dresses and tunics. For Jon, far more was obvious in the dead of night, as they fucked past the point of endurance—at least his own. Autumn had brought as many changes to the world outside as it had to their bedchamber.

“Yes, yes, stay hard for me.  _ Yes _ .”

Above him, Dany continued her urgent gyrating. Sweat glistened on her face and neck, dripped down her growing breasts, over the gentle curve of her belly. She tossed her head back as she rode him, lost in a pleasure so exquisite and enduring Jon was dizzy just watching her. His cock was throbbing and raw, a bizarre mixture of oversensitive and numb. He’d been pinned beneath her since the moon had first appeared within sight of their window. For hours perhaps, as it was now less than a quarter within view.

But she loved him, seemed to need to satisfy her lust as much as she craved his nurturing purr. Jon felt like an addiction. Every night, Dany pinned him to whatever was closest. The floor, their bed, tables and chairs. On warmer nights, after a moonlit flight, Jon’s back and buttock were scratched up as she claimed him out in the wilderness, on rocks and mud and their stone balconies.

Tonight, she’d chosen their bed. Jon let her lead, found himself enraptured as she soothed her needs. He was hers entirely. 

Dany cried out his name, her voice catching as her cunt clenched around him once more. Jon groaned with her, his slick hands gripping her thighs. He couldn’t believe how driven she was to claim him, to remind them both of their love.

She fell forward as her orgasm shuddered through her body, forearms resting on his shoulders. Inside her, Jon was still aching for release. He remained still, however. Let her decide if she’d peaked for the night. Her breast tips brushed his chest, darker and larger already, each going from small firmness, to a gentle swell. Their stomachs pressed together, Jon’s eyes drifting shut as he felt each of them—all three of his loves, thriving.

“I love you,” Dany mumbled. She kissed his lips, his nose, his cheeks. “My beautiful Jon, and your lovely cock.”

He grinned despite how tired he was. Keeping up with Dany’s increased sex drive was difficult enough, but his nightly purring had begun to take a toll as well. Wrapping his love around her, easing her queasiness, her aches and pains, her discomfort. Try as he might, Jon’s weariness was growing.

“Mmm, is that your favorite part of me, love?”

Dany laughed. “No. Though, perhaps a bit more of late. Your eyes are my favorite, and your silly curls, your quick smile. How true your heart fits with mine.”

She was worth it, though. All his weariness and aches, every moment of trial as he took so much of her body’s discomfort as his own. 

Dany’s next kiss was soft and deep. Her tongue caressed his bottom lip, tickled the tip of his own. She began to ride him once more, canting her hips at different angles until his breath caught. Jon spilled inside her within seconds, flooded with bliss and contentment. 

That night, Dany’s purr soothed him to sleep, his own too exhausted to fire to life. She cradled him close, her scent the bright sweetness of lemons as he slept. When he woke, Dany was resting beside him. For a moment, he worried that the lack of his own purr for the first night since they’d conceived, would hit her hard. But one touch to her rounded belly proved Jon wrong.

Five months now. Thriving more each day.

Jon pressed a kiss to her belly, to her shoulder and neck. By the time he reached her cheek, Dany was squirming awake. In the golden morning light, she seemed to glow.

“How are you feeling?”

“Wonderful, Jon. You don’t need to worry.” Dany’s hand slid over his where he cupped her firm belly. “You don’t need to exhaust yourself either.”

“I’m not.”

“Don’t lie.” Dany twisted her upper body to face him, pecked him on the lips. “I can feel you as well as you can feel me. And your thoughts. Nurturing them every night… I don’t think we need it so much now. They know you’re here, Jon. Both of them sense you just as I do.”

Dany stroked his cheek, scratched her fingertips through his beard. Jon kissed her palm.

“You’ll let me know when you need it?”

“Of course. I daresay, you’ll sense it just as I will. Besides,” Dany told him, a smile creeping onto her face. “Right now, what I really want and need, is to be fucked until I can’t move every night. You can’t do that right if you’re exhausted.”

He laughed at that, kissed her again. “Not today, Dany. Or tonight, I’m afraid. We head north today, remember?”

Her eyes sparkled, excited but nervous, too. Jon’s own feelings were similar. He’d left Winterfell, left his pack behind almost a year ago. Eleven moons. Mama and Nana Lyarra were probably worried sick, resigned to having lost him somewhere out in the world. His little cousins had no doubt sprouted gangly legs as they grew into towering, strong direwolves. They must all think that he had died alone and in agony as his dragon ripped him apart.

_ I’ll be there tomorrow, Mama. I promise. And Papa, too. I can howl with you now, we can sing all night. _

But his hopes for Rhaegar joining their journey were quickly dashed. After breakfast, Jon and Dany prepared for departure on Uncle Aemon’s balcony in the morning light, the golden rays warm and brilliant. Rhaella helped double check their supplies for their short trip. But Rhaegar didn’t arrive until Jon was about to shift to have the harness secured around his dragon skin. He landed with a hard click of his claws. One look told Jon his father’s decision.

“You aren’t coming with us.” 

“Jon, this wasn’t an easy choice.”

“But you chose wrong all the same.” Venom laced his words, though nobody bothered to stop him. Jon half-wished they would, but the shame on Rhaegar’s face made him glad they did not. “So that’s it? You’re going to sit here, a coward, and make me tell her? After almost twenty years of thinking you’re dead, you’re going to make  _ me _ tell her you’re alive and that you don’t want to see her?”

Rhaegar reached out to grasp his arm. “Of course I want to see—”

“Don’t lie to me.” Jon knocked his father’s arm aside, his hands curled into fists. Only Dany grabbing his wrist kept him from hitting Rhaegar. “If you wanted to see her, you’d go with us. But you aren’t, so go then. Go back to your empty hive. You came to say what you needed to say, and that’s that.”

“Jon—”

“ _ Go! _ ”

Rhaegar seemed to shrink before Jon’s rage, his head bowed in meekness, but still nobody else said a word. With a last queasy glance, Rhaegar turned, expanding to his scales and wings and lifted off into the rising sun.

Rhaella and Uncle Aemon hugged them both goodbye, though the mood had been ruined. Jon stewed in his fury, his scales smothering with heat, steaming as his grandmother and Dany strapped the harness around him. Dany climbed up his wing, fitted herself into the curved seat of the new harness and belted herself in place. They’d needed to create something new, both for her protection from falling, but more so to assure that a rough flight wouldn’t end with his spikes scratching or stabbing her larger belly.

_ Soar fast and high, Jon. _

He threw himself into the crisp morning air. Let his frustration and rage guide him at a far more rapid pace than their original plan. By midday, Jon was winded, his thorny chest heaving, the forks of the Trident converging below. Dappled sunlight fractured in the air before him, made his eyes burn between his own smoking nostrils and the hazy air. Still, he carried on, despite the persistent feeling of Dany’s worry at his mood. Dusk brought the last of his strength as the gloomy darkness of the central swamps of the Neck filled the landscape below. 

_ Love, its getting cold. We need to rest.  _ You _ need to rest. _

Reluctantly, Jon began his descent along the eastern edge where the swamps met the shoreline. Dany would want to talk, he’d sensed it and ignored it for most of the day. Only replied when their internal conversation didn’t revolve around his father. She climbed down once he’d settled on the muddy ground, snout working furiously to detect any threats nearby. Besides a few gentle creatures, most of them scattering his massive scales, the area was safe.

Jon shifted back to himself, his legs wobbling from overuse. The harness flumped to ground around him. Dany scooped it up, rolling the straps until it was a large bundle in her arms.

“We should find shelter for the night,” Jon said, ignoring the critical way she watched him. “And food.”

“We brought food, Jon. Enough for three days, just in case.”

But he longed to hunt, to stalk down a fresh stag or bear, to dive into the sea and feel the way bones splintered in his jaw, to taste the hot gush of blood, to smell the last seconds of fear before he claimed a kill. To thrust his fury onto anything else besides his own mind.

Dany grabbed his face, gave him a hard shake. “Jon, stop. I know you’re angry, but hunting won’t help. He made his choice, and that… it’s on him. Come on. Let’s find somewhere to sleep.”

When she took his hand, Jon gave in. His spikes continued to bristle in anger, his head throbbing from a full day of rage and heartsickness. Rhaegar had abandoned them. Left Jon to explain this mess, left  _ Mama _ behind again, written her off…

“Shh, I know, love. I know.” 

He found himself in Dany’s arms, and while the tears fell, his insides were hollow from more than hunger. Jon cried in silence as the sun set behind the tree line. It was then that he smelled it—the slickness between the aroma of swampy fungus and still water. Moss, and reptilian skin, a touch of reeds. Salty reeds and blood. Dany sensed it, too.

Jon heard the beast before he saw him, but the great lizard-lion emerged from the bog behind them, his back covered in moss, fungus, little spines of reeds. His teeth were like daggers lining his long snout. As the lizard-lion hissed, Jon shifted. His dragon skin swelled to fill their clearing, his tail lashing out, ripping a pair of trees up by their thick roots. One wing curled protectively around Dany, hiding her from sight as he hunkered lower and let out a shrieking roar that made the earth tremble.

The lizard-lion stilled, his tail splashing, tongue tasting the air, third eyelids sliding into sight. Jon snarled, opened his mouth and let his dragonflame build in his throat, piercingly bright in its pale brilliance.

_ Jon, don’t. He’s… I think he’s friendly. His scent… he’s a shifter, too. _

After his hours of rage, Jon’s senses were off. He didn’t back down, but Jon took a longer sniff of the air, the threads of moss and salty reeds, and hidden, under all the layers of bog and mud and fungus, the soft skin of a middle-aged man.

Jon calmed his flame, still hunched protectively over Dany as the lizard-lion approached. Once he was on the muddy earth, he shifted to a man. Short, slightly hunched, and thin. The blood of his scent faded in his human skin, the salty reeds and moss steadier as he swept his thatch of blond hair out of his eyes. His eyebrows had already gone gray.

“You’re Lyanna’s boy, aren’t you, lad? Jon Stark?”

“Targaryen,” Dany answered as she peered out from behind Jon’s wing. “And you?”

“Howland Reed, my dears.” He offered a wistful smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dragon, though your mother will be relieved to find you’re alive. She was down here, this past spring, searching for you, Jon. Asking if you’d passed through.”

Slowly, Jon shifted to his smaller human body. Howland did not come any closer, but he continued to smile in relief, his eyes scanning Jon’s face.

“You look like her,” Howland decided. He looked Dany over, too, his eyes coming to rest on the little swell of her belly. “Congratulations, my dear. Both of you.”

Jon snarled before he could stop himself, one hand curling around Dany’s hip to rest on her stomach. Dany shushed him.

“I’m Daenerys,” she offered. “We’re sorry to intrude on your home. It’s just for the night. Tomorrow, we strike north for Winterfell.”

“No intrusion, no bother at all.” Howland kept his eyes on Jon as he came closer, finally shaking Dany’s hand and then Jon’s. “Our castle is deeper in the swamp, I left when I spotted you in the sky. I  _ hoped _ you were Lyanna’s boy, I’m glad to be right. Come, please, you can stay with us tonight. Avoid the storm and the bugs, have a comfortable bed, a warm meal.”

Dany needed no further convincing as thunder rumbled overhead. Jon followed behind her, still sniffing Howland out, his senses haywire after his stampede of rage and broken trust, his insides raw and tired. They followed Howland through the dark gloom, meandering along a path neither of them could distinguish from the rest of the bog, but that Howland seemed to know. After fifteen minutes, a castle came into sight under the moonlight, small and moving, built on a crannog floating its way through the deep water. Three small towers formed the perimeter, the central keep twice as tall.

“Welcome to Greywater Watch,” Howland said, and he clapped Jon on the shoulder. “Your mother came here, years and years ago, when you were just a stirring in her belly.”

Inside, the castle was plain but warm. Jon and Dany joined Howland in a small dining chamber for a feast of fried frog legs. They shared their own provisions, too, but Howland didn’t seem interested in the roasted stag nor the fish.

“Must be a dragon thing,” Howland said after he sniffed a hunk of stag and grimaced. “Too charred and smoky for my kind.”

Dany seemed glad to hear it. She devoured everything they’d brought, her purr a steady hum that made Howland smile. However, it was Jon that interested him most. 

“They’re worried sick, lad. All of them. Had a member of your pack here every moon asking after you.”

“Sorry.” His anger was still thrumming in his chest, made the word feel wrong. Rhaegar should be the one apologizing today, not him. “I went south to find Dany. To learn my second skin before… well, before it killed me.”

“And succeeded,” Howland remarked, his eyes falling on Dany still gorging herself. Her mouth and hands were covered in grease and blood. “I must say, it was terrifying to see a dragon that close after the one that chased your mother here.”

Dany froze before him, her purr stuttering. “You saw the dragon that chased Lyanna here?”

Howland nodded. “Terror, he was. Torched everything around the Trident, the Gods Eye. But here, in the Neck, scents are hard to track. Lyanna was smart, rolled herself all around in the mud and moss and fungus. I ran into her while that dragon was wheeling overhead. Brought her back here until it passed north. Horrible thing. Even on the ground, I could feel him. Rust and fire and a hunger for death.”

“Father.” Dany set her charred bone down, troubled. “Jon’s grandfather, my father. He lost himself to his dragon.”

“And vanished beyond the Wall,” Jon added. “Did you ever see him after that? Or the color of his fire?”

“His fire?” Howland considered the question. “Blue, best I recall. Both times he passed overhead. The first was when Lyanna made it into the swamps. You could hear his shrieks for miles, all day and night. Then he returned again, the day we took her to the caves north of the Neck. They lead all the way back to the wolfswood outside Winterfell.”

His story lined up, at least to what Lyanna had told Jon a year past. And the dragonflame and scent, too, but the entire tale left Jon uneasy. When Dany squeezed his right hand, the scars burned anew. He heard her gasp inside his head, saw her eyes fall to their joined hands. Somehow, Aerys was both dragons. Every mention of his grandfather made Jon more certain. The only question left was  _ how _ .

 

* * *

 

Rain lashed Greywater Watch, a sweltering autumn storm churning outside as they retired for the night. The wind screamed through the moss-drenched branches and trees, the cracks in the stone walls. Dany curled into him at once, rubbed his neck frills until their purrs throbbed to life, easing them both with their shared comfort.

“It was him,” Dany whispered into the raging dark. More rain splattered the window in their chamber. “Your burn scars, you can feel it.”

“Aye, I can. It doesn’t make sense though, none of it does.”

Aerys’s dragonflame had been the same as in his youth. Cerulean, rusted, not charred ice rotting the air with a putrid fog. But the two were the same. Jon’s very blood ran cold with the truth.

“And at the Wall, you smelled his flame, too?”

“Yeah, but… when I met him, it wasn’t like that anymore. How could it change? I thought maybe it was his madness, but...”

Dany kissed his throat as they both fell silent. Outside the storm thrashed the trees and the deep swamp waters, more persistent than their heart beats. For a long time, they simply held each other as the storm ebbed and swelled, until Dany offered an uncertain possibility.

“Maybe it was the Wall. His mind was already lost to his dragon, rage and fire, all of his family forgotten. Alysanne said she couldn’t think to cross in her dragon skin, nor while pregnant, but if Aerys was consumed entirely, then maybe the magic of the Wall altered him beyond repair.”

The thought wasn’t pleasant, but Jon couldn’t think of any other explanations. Instead he shifted until their bellies lined up, let the soft lull of his purr begin to pulse with his nurturing heat. Dany tucked herself against him as they drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, Howland led them north through the bog to where the ground turned hard and the trees shrunk to shrubs. 

“Caves are over there, but I suspect you’d rather fly,” Howland said with a laugh. “Can’t blame you, not with a skin like that.”

“Thank you for the hospitality,” Jon said. 

They shook hands, Dany gave Howland a hug and a smile. Jon shifted a few feet away, his white scales gleaming in the misty morning. As Dany hooked the harness around his wing joints and chest, Howland admired his dragon skin. From the scarlet neck frills to his gray-nailed wing claws. Howland’s delight was like a balm on the last of Jon’s rage at his father. He dreaded the evening, the moment he had to sit down with his mother and tell her the truth, but Dany would be with him.

She climbed up and strapped in. Howland gave Jon a gentle pat on the snout.

“You two arriving will be a sight those wolves won’t soon forgot.”

Clouds marred the skies as they flew north. Jon kept a slower pace this time, let the familiar smells of his home crest over him with each league they passed, his wing tips skimming the top plumes of the clouds. Pines and sentinels, the cold rock of the mountains to the northwest, a bite of snowflakes already clear in the air. Upon his back, Dany’s joy was contagious. She’d never seen the north before, felt the true cold or the clasp of a warm fire as winter’s fury buried the land. His molten scales kept her warm as winter slipped in around them.

At the first aroma of weirwood sap, Jon dipped below the thick clouds, felt the prickles of ice melt on his scales. Below, Winterfell’s sprawling turrets and towers were like black cylinders amongst the snowfall. The only color was the great weirwood, its scarlet leaves blooming in the otherwise chromatic view.

Joy burst from his mouth, a song of homecoming as he dived toward the ground. In the distance, he could hear his pack howling.

Dany slid down his wing and into the powdery snow. Her laughter echoed across the field as she scooped it up for the first time and tossed it into the air. Jon shifted and gathered up the harness, but not before pulling his pelt from their pack. Through the trees, their paws beat in time with his heart. Arya, Bran, Sansa, Robb. Further back, though, he could smell his oldest safety. Mist on scarlet leaves, the muddiness of the earth in spring. Strong pine, a smooth brushstroke of weirwood sap.

_ Mama. Nana. _

“Don’t worry, they’ll love you,” Jon murmured as Dany’s laughter faded with the approaching wolves. She stuck close to his side, welcomed the warm familiarity of his pelt as Jon wrapped her in it. He tucked his horns and spikes under his skin. 

Arya was the first to burst into the clearing, the snowfall exploding and speckling her dark fur. She’d grown more than he’d imagined in the past year. Lean and tall, a bulk of firm muscle and shaggy fur. Her icicle blizzard scent mixed with a new hint of weirwood sap flooded the space, only falling short where he and Dany stood. Still submissive to him, but the strength of her was already apparent.

“Come here then.” 

Jon dropped to his knees and was barreled over by his little cousin’s enthusiasm. One by one his cousins raced into the clearing, howling and whining as they tackled him. His face was drenched from their licks and kisses, snow getting under his clothes from the excited pile of wolves. But when Lyanna and Nana Lyarra arrived, his cousins stepped away.

Jon sat up, snow in his curls and beard, grinning as his horns poked free.

“Mama,” he whispered, and then she ran to him.

Lyanna shifted as she embraced him, her silvery pelt flying off her shoulders as she dropped to her knees in the snow.

“Oh, Jon, my sweet boy,  _ gods _ . I’d thought— _ Jon _ .”

He buried himself in her warmth, the scents of his childhood settling around them. Weirwood sap and mist and the first spark of a kindling fire, the tremulous taste of their pack’s howl filling the landscape. Nana Lyarra sniffed him over, took a particular interest in his horns and neck frills, but they all pulled apart when someone growled.

It was Sansa, hunkered low to the ground, half-growling half-whining, as she stared warily at Dany. Trying to submit, but resisting, too. For a few moments, his pelt had masked the incredible strength and power of Dany’s brimstone and lemon. But she was still strong to be hidden, to bold and incredible to not be noticed.

Jon returned to Dany’s side, took her hand and kissed her cheek. 

“Everyone, this is Dany. My dragon, my mate, my love.”

Around them, the Starks shifted one by one. Lyanna pulled her pelt back around her shoulders. Robb grinned from Bran’s side, suddenly looking much shorter with the younger boy’s sudden height. Arya was as wild as ever, her hair a tangled mess, but her grin was unmatched. Even Sansa smiled, but her senses made her hesitate. Dany was a new alpha, an uncertainty until their highest made everything clear. 

Nana Lyarra and Lyanna approached first.

“Dany, it’s wonderful to meet you.”

Lyanna’s tearful face broke into a smile, her hand tentative as it reached out to stroke Jon’s pelt where it rested on Dany’s shoulder. Then she scooped Dany into her arms, crying all the harder. It took Jon and Nana Lyarra several moments to separate them, and while Dany’s surprise was palpable, her delight at their acceptance was genuine, too.

“Dany, dear, are you…?”

Lyanna’s streaming eyes had fallen to Dany’s midsection, hidden under his shaggy white fur.

“Five moons a few days ago,” Dany told her. “Still a long way to go.”

“Only four, isn’t it?” Arya broke in, as she tucked herself against Jon’s side. “You’re more than halfway.”

“It’s different for dragons,” Jon explained. “A full year. Come summer,” he said, meeting his mother’s eyes, “you’ll have two grandbabies to spoil.”

“ _ Two? _ ”

Lyanna was beside herself. Arya hugged her as Nana Lyarra moved forward. Behind her, the rest of Jon’s cousins waited for an indication of how things would be. Nana examined Dany from booted feet to crimson horns, sniffing quietly, her eyes hard and considering.

“You helped Jon learn his second skin?”

“Yes, we did. The other Targaryens,” Dany said, her voice strong, unyielding. Her eyes were gentle, though, unafraid of whatever challenge might present itself. “Me, my mother, Uncle Aemon, and…”

She hesitated then, glanced at Jon and then Lyanna who had finally calmed down with Arya’s help.

Nana Lyarra stroked Jon’s pelt wrapped around Dany, then smiled.

“Thank you. Without you, Jon would be…”

“I’ve dreamt about him ever since I was a little girl,” Dany told her. “Finding him was right. He’s mine as I am his.”

Jon looked on nervously, but his concerns were for naught. His grandmother smiled and embraced Dany warmly. The rest of his cousins approached then to introduce themselves, to touch Jon’s horns and spikes, to rejoice in Dany’s presence and the thought of new dragons to join the pack in the coming year. Even Sansa hugged Dany, apologizing for her growls, her instinctual uncertainty.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” Sansa explained. “I’m just… new alphas are confusing, especially at my age. But I’m so glad you and Jon found each other.”

“About time you found a proper mate,” Robb agreed, grinning as he hugged Jon by the neck with his arm. “Come on, let’s get inside before the storm gets going. And you can meet Alayne finally!”

“Gods, you’re a father.” The idea of it shook Jon to his core, even as Dany clutched his arm and the three hearts pattering in her torso settled in his blood. “She’s probably already half-grown.”

“Crawling,” Robb said as he released Jon and began to escort Dany toward Winterfell’s distance towers. “Spends most of her day as a snuggly little pup, so your two will be in good company.”

“If they’ve got direwolf skins,” Jon reminded him. “I’m not sure how we’ll tell until after they’re born.”

They made their way to Winterfell through the ankle-deep snow, but it was his mother’s watery smile that called Jon to her side. The rest of the pack closed around Dany, talking and laughing and warmer than a solstice sun. Jon hung back to place his arm around his mother’s shoulders. He was a head taller than her now, disoriented by how she’d shrunk several more inches since he’d left home.

“You found her.”

“Aye, I did.” Jon bit his lip, a bubble of rage and bitterness swelling inside him. He had to tell her, could not hold back such a truth. She’d wondered for near eighteen years, had resigned Rhaegar’s fate to a hollow, violent death. “Mama, he was there, too. Rhaegar. He survived Aerys’s attack, made it back south thinking you were dead. I asked him to come north with us and…”

Lyanna’s entire body had gone stiffer than death. “He doesn’t want to see me.”

“He does.” Even saying it, within sight of her devastation and kindling rage was like bile in his mouth. “He’s just—”

“A coward. Unable to face me, as if his grief and guilt and fear is more important than what we shared.” 

He didn’t know how to answer that, but Lyanna gave him no chance to reply. She shook her tears off, kissed his cheek, and tugged him onward toward the castle.

“Come on, sweet wolf, you have eleven months to fill me in on and a dragon skin to show me, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnd I leave you there for now!
> 
> Hopefully, Embers on Tuesday. I'm flying back to the east coast today to visit family and go to a wedding, so I'll be busy with real life happenings. I will try my best to get the next Embers chapter written, but... it's likely it'll be later next week.
> 
> Also, as always, thank you thank you thank you for still hanging around for these stories and these two cute little dragonbaes. :)


	14. A Time For Wolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Tuesday, another chapter!
> 
> We've got three more left by my current count, then probably some sort of epilogue.
> 
> Enjoy!

The North’s fresh, chilly dawn arrived just as Jon remembered it. His pelt ruffled in the autumn breeze, resting atop his and Dany’s naked bodies, limned in golden sunlight. Already, his pack’s scent was returning. Mountain air, woody pine, the crack of thin ice glazing over the wolfswood streams. Dew clinging to oak leaves and sap dripping from sentinels. And always, always, the heady blood of weirwood that marked home.

Most important, beyond the familial comfort that settled in the air around Jon, Dany was curled against him. The gentle squirms of their babes moved against his palm like tiny muscle twitches. The mingled scents of brimstone and strawberries and charred wood kindling a fire.

“I suppose your nurture purr can’t make their movements anymore comfortable.”

“Think it ending just woke them up, love.” Jon caressed her swollen belly. She wasn’t yet as round as she would be, had little more than half a year to go, but the increase thrilled him. Seeing the effect of their mating upon her, the way she glowed and grew only made him long for her more. “Sorry.”

“They’re happy,” Dany mumbled as her hand joined his. “I can feel their little heartbeats sometimes. Fast and strong and loved.” She snorted then. “And I can feel  _ that _ , too, Jon Targaryen.”

“What? You don’t want to start the day with our usual lazy rut?”

“Hmm, when you put it that way…”

Someone knocked on the door to his chambers. Jon grumbled as he pulled on his pants, wrapped himself in his pelt and went to answer. His mother’s bright smile greeted him, her eyes tired and puffy.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Nearly.” After a glance at his childhood bed to make sure Dany was decent, Jon let Lyanna in. “We just woke up. The, uh, well, my purr… it’s this… dragon thing it does. For the twins.” Jon scratched the back of his neck and squinted at Lyanna’s curious face. “It’s a bit hard to explain.”

“Over breakfast then, sweet wolf.” She kissed his cheek, then smiled over at Dany. “I hoped to invite you, dear, but I’m afraid my nieces have other ideas.”

Jon smelled them before he saw them. Arya barrelled into the room in direwolf form, clumsy on her growing legs, but great and gray and fierce. Sansa was pristine and calm in her human skin, wearing a simple blue dress, her red pelt soft and clean around her shoulders.

“Arya, for gods’ sake.”

His little cousin pushed right past Lyanna and toward the bed. Jon caught her around the middle and restrained her.

“If you crush my mate and our babes with your big, overexcited paws, I’ll roast you.”

Arya gave a growl and tried to pull free, but despite her muscles and size, he was still stronger. He transformed and gave her a playful, but forceful snap of his jaws. They wrestled upon the floor for a few minutes, before he pinned her, sniffed her offered belly. He gave her ear a friendly nip before they shifted to their human skins.

“I wasn’t gonna hurt her.” Arya glowered at him, then offered a petulant grimace to Dany. “I wouldn’t hurt’em. Sansa said she can’t smell them yet, so I wanted to prove her  _ wrong _ .”

“Dragon scents are different,” Dany told her. “Before our little ones, nobody had been able to detect a baby dragon’s scent until the very end of the pregnancy.”

“But you can this time? Cause they’ve direwolves, too?” Arya shot Jon a demanding look. “They’re both like you, aren’t they?”

Jon rolled his eyes, mussed up her hair and pelt. “Did we know if Rickon could shift until after he was born?”

She scowled at him, every bit her twelve years. “But his scent said he could.”

“Scents have little to do with that,” Lyanna said. “For us, at least. While I was pregnant everything within a hundred yards smelled like hot ash, from the very first day. Yet Jon was still in his paws before he learned to crawl.”

Jon flushed when she turned her teasing smile on him. But the news brought a spark of interest, too. In a womb not rimmed with fire and a dragon skin, his otherness had been dominantly apparent. Sansa gave Arya a good pinch on her arm.

“We aren’t here to argue scents,” she told her sister. Sansa approached the bed where Dany still sat. “Do you want to have breakfast with us? And everyone else, of course. We can show you the rest of the castle. If you want.”

The slightest shift upright from Dany made Sansa’s spine bend. Try as his cousin might, her submissiveness was still affected by Dany’s dragon skin. 

_ By our dragon skins. We’re more alpha in the space of a few feet than she’s ever experienced in her entire life. _

Lyanna and Arya, too, had that quality. He’d already known his mother’s potential, but the fierce glimmer in Arya’s eyes, the weirwood sap mixing into her long-held scent of a raging blizzard. His little cousin was an alpha in the making. Some day, she might take over instead of him. Then he wouldn’t have to choose, wouldn’t bring depths of heartache to Dany and Rhaella being separated for long spans of time. And his own mother might come south with them, to put Rhaegar to rights.

Jon shook himself from his thoughts, let his scent spread through the room like a soft, soothing fog. Not overpowering, but gentle, familiar. Sansa glanced at him gratefully while Arya bristled in discomfort. With her instincts calmed, Sansa straightened and released the death grip she had on her pelt. She peered hopefully at Dany, then sighed as his love’s lemon sweetness mingled with his ash. Combined, their scents quieted both girls.

“I’d love to join you,” Dany told her as she stumbled to her feet. “I’m starving.”

A rumble of deep hunger rocked Jon then, a wave of Dany’s needs bubbling up across their bond. Cravings for charred bone and blistering hot flesh. Things she would not get until he hunted and seared something fresh for her.

“I’ll hunt something for you later,” Jon told her. “Sear it just how you like, okay?”

Her smile was brave as she raised herself up on her toes to kiss him, then widened as he wrapped his pelt around her shoulders. 

“To keep you warm.” 

He grinned as she rolled her eyes, kissed him a second time, then departed with his cousins. Arya’s persistent questions faded down the corridor.

“She’s wonderful, Jon.”

His mother’s tears made his own eyes heat. “Mama, don’t.”

“Oh, I’ll cry if I wish it now that you’re back and safe,” she muttered, wiping at her eyes. “My sweet little wolf. You’ve changed so much, haven’t you?”

He gave a weak shrug. “I’m still me.”

“Yes, but  _ whole _ now.” Her fingers brushed over his shoulder spikes, laughing as they flexed into her grasp. “Right. This is  _ right _ . I’m so proud of you.”

“It was Dany more than me,” Jon insisted. “If she hadn’t found me at the Gods Eye… the whole way south, it was like I was fighting myself. Resisting all of this,” he gestured at his horns, “because I didn’t know what else to do. But Dany did. She carried me south, to their home. And Papa…”

A plume of smoke escaped his mouth, made Lyanna choke as it filled the room. Jon pushed his window open further to let it waft out. Thorns of anger pierced his skin, much as his spikes had in the beginning. Not clean cut or easy to understand.

“Don’t be angry at him on my account.” Lyanna joined him at the window, peering down into the fresh blanket of snow in the courtyard. As they watched, Bran, Rickon, and Arya zipped past as wolves sending up clouds of snow. Dany and Sansa followed behind, talking and laughing as the wolves tumbled through the drifts. “Your father and I have not seen each other in years, Jon. When we were together, it was all so brief. Hardly a full season.”

“That’s no excuse! He  _ loves _ you. I know he does, he’s—”

“Your father all the same.” Her voice went to stone, tears returned to her gray eyes. “If he wishes to be a coward toward me, then I will accept it, however much I hate it. But I don’t want my relationship with him to hurt yours.”

“How can it not, Mama? You’re everything I’ve ever known. The one who’s always been there, and he…”

Frustration settled uncomfortable and heavy in his stomach. Rhaegar was many things. A gentle teacher, a kind, good-hearted man. The father Jon had always dreamed about, but not quite the one he’d dreamt up as a boy. Without his encouragement and love in the south, how much harder would the past year have been?

“He taught me to sing,” Jon said as his cousins and Dany passed through the arched gate into the godswood below. “I can howl again. A real proper howl like all of you. And sing as a dragon, too.”

Lyanna’s smile was a scar taking shape on his heart. “I know, sweet one. Your impending fatherhood would not be possible otherwise.”

“You two sang?”

“Just the once, together. More so him than me. His song was like the stars falling to earth to dance with us,” Lyanna said, her voice turning wistful. “I howled as he danced above me, chasing him as a shadow on the ground. Every moment was perfect, so much so that we made you.”

“And now he can’t face either of us.”

His spikes curled closer to his skin in his fury, but Lyanna wrapped him in her arms and pelt. “Don’t. His cowardice is his own to deal with, and mine to decide what to do with when that day comes. Don’t let it taint the love you’ve built with him.”

Jon buried his nose in her thick fur, inhaled the overwhelming streaks of muddy earth awakening in spring, the heavy mist of morning on weirwood leaves. His horn brushed her cheek, caught the aching burden corroding inside her.

“I love you first,” Jon reminded her. “Winterfell’s my home, here with you. Not south with him.”

She smoothed his curls as she pulled away, tucked a stray one behind a horn. Her smile was sad. “Your home is with Dany now, Jon. Wherever she is, you’ll be there, too.”

They ate together in his mother’s chambers and spoke of happier tales from their year apart. Some moments were still difficult to discuss. Gruesome were those first hours beneath Uncle Aemon’s hill as blood ran down his back and his spikes tried to thread through his raw skin even a year past. Other memories were pleasant. His times with Dany, growing and talking and loving, flying upon her back, their shared fire dream over a decade apart—the day they’d chosen each other for life. Meeting his second grandmother and finding her steady strength a comforting echo of Nana Lyarra. Wisen old Uncle Aemon, with his lilac horns and gentle humor and knowledge. He skipped around his father best he could, but Lyanna was too intune to miss such omissions. 

“It’s okay to speak of Rhaegar,” she assured him, though her scent flared in grief and anger. “He helped with your first transformation?”

“As much as he could,” Jon said. “I sort of…”

“What?”

“After my fire dream, the next morning, they took me onto the balcony to shift and fly. Dany was up in the sky to guide me, them down below, but I saw her up there… and just jumped.” Jon chuckled as his father’s horrified voice echoed back to him. “Right off the balcony and transformed in the air to get to her.”

“You could have hurt yourself,” Lyanna scolded, but she was smiling, too. “It was past your time to be in the skies. When you were little, I kept waiting for something to change. To wake with you flapping around the bed or with tiny horns poking through your curls. I hadn’t a clue what to expect.” A tremor ran through her as she set her fork and knife down. “Gods, if you’d stayed here, Jon, I can’t think of what might have happened.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to tell her. His death, painful and scalding, would have been the result as his dragonfire consumed him from the inside. Instead, he talked her through the stages of his dragon skin’s acceptance—knowledge she’d never been told by Rhaegar. Another wave of irritation swept him up like a surging tide. How could Rhaegar have been so ill-prepared? Lacked the forethought to explain a dragon’s life to the woman he’d chosen to mate with? 

“ _ Jon _ , stop.”

“Sorry.” He brushed the smoke pouring from his nostrils aside, flushed at the blossom of fire churning in his belly. “Every time I think of him now…”

“Focus elsewhere until you’re ready then,” Lyanna told him. “Think of those sweet little babies you and Dany have made, their new lives still growing to join us in this world. They’ll be here before you know it.”

An almost rambunctious joy caught in his throat, his heart pattering faster. He need to hunt for them. Soon. To make sure his love and their babes had the very best, the nourishment they needed most.

“Jon?”

He shook himself, felt his eyes balloon and then shrink, but even then the room around them glowed twice as brilliant as before. If Lyanna was startled by his dragon eyes, she didn’t show it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just need to hunt for Dany,” he told her. “She can’t transform while she’s pregnant, but charred meat, blackened bones…”

Lyanna seemed to understand, even as she gazed at his face, taking in every new piece of him in turn. After several blinks, his eyes returned to normal.

“Let’s not keep her waiting then,” she said. “And I wish to see your second skin after all these years.”

Outside the castle walls, his cousins and Dany had succumbed to the natural urges that only a heavy, wet snowfall could bring. Snowballs filled the air, exploding on pelts and backs and poorly erected snow walls. Jon ducked a particularly large one Arya lobbed at his head, only for an even bigger one to hit his neck frills. Icy snow dripped down his back as he gave a shout and spun to find Dany grinning and holding a second snowball high.

“That’s very rude when I’m about to go hunt for you three.”

She made a throwing motion with her armed hand, but didn’t release. Jon still flinched, however, ducking as so many years of preparation had taught him.

“Best hurry up before I hit you again.”

Then she threw it at his face. Jon yelped at the rush of cold, but with a burst of flame in his belly, most of it melted to lukewarm water at once. Dany dived down to make a third snowball, only to squeal as he scooped her up and buried her in a big snowdrift. She yanked him in by the hand, laughing and rolling until they came to rest out of range of the others.

“I didn’t think I’d like snow quite so much,” Dany told him. She brushed some off his shoulders as he pulled her onto his lap. “Being here, with your family…”

“They’re your family, too, now.” 

Jon kissed her cheek as she shivered, drew her belly to his and let his purr rumble up. Not the same depth of his nurturing one, but traces of that heat flooded his stomach, spread swiftly over her skin until her face was flushed, her brow damp with sweat. Dany tugged him closer for a hard kiss, her need apparent as her fingers stroked his neck frills.

“A snow drift is hardly the place, loves.”

They broke apart to find Lyanna staring down at them. As one, his cousins all poked their heads up over the snow heap. Rickon and Bran pulled grossed out faces, Arya made a gagging noise. Sansa rolled her eyes, and Robb grinned and winked.

“Not bad, Snow.”

“Are we going to see your dragon skin or not?” Rickon pulled himself up to the top of the heap, then slid down to Lyanna’s feet. “I want to see a  _ dragon! _ ”

“All right, all right!” Jon gave Dany a final peck and helped her to her feet. “Clear out then, or I’ll knock you over.”

Dany, Lyanna, and Robb gathered the others away at a safe distance. Jon stood alone as wind swept snow across the field, buried his ankles then uncovered them. As a boy, he’d dreamt of Rhaegar swooping low over this very spot, singing his son south. Trying to call him home. 

_ Show them before our hungry babes put a hole in my ribs. _

He laughed as he turned into the wind, his wings and thorny chest exploding outward. Every part of him grew and grew, until he was towering above the Starks and Dany. Jon swiped his spiked tail through the snow, let his fire spread through every bone and muscle and scale on his body against the cold. When he shook out his neck frills, water splattered the steaming ground. All the snow beneath him had melted, but his scales still gleamed like crystal reflecting the white landscape.

Dany was the first to move toward him, clasping Lyanna’s hand and drawing her nearer. Most of his cousins stood back, mouths open in awe, but a hint of fear, too. Arya, however, gave a wild laugh and bolt to him.

“Will you take me for a ride?” She rubbed her hand over his thorny cheek, winced at the heat. When she pulled her hand away, the flesh was bright red. “Ouch! You burned me, ass.”

Jon crooned at her, shut his great eyes and breathed his fire back to his core. He gave her a nudge with his snout and blinked at her. Arya’s hand hovered over his scales for a moment before making contact.

“That’s better.” Arya dipped to kiss his snout, then hurried back to urge Lyanna and Dany faster. “Come on! His scales are so warm.”

Dany’s touch brought his purr to life. She scratched along the thorny ridges under his eye, up toward his horns.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told Lyanna. “He’s quite tame.”

Mama laughed at that, wiped the tears from her eyes. They steamed as her palm came to rest on his snout. “Look at you, Jon. Like a weirwood turned dragon, you’re magnificent.”

One by one, the rest of his cousins approached. Bran and Sansa were tentative at first, but Robb offered no hint of fear. Rickon decided he’d never have a better opportunity to hit Jon with snowballs. They smacked against his steaming scales, his youngest cousin dancing out of reach and laughing. 

For a time, Jon let them examine him, admire the bulk of his still growing size, the hardening scales, the flexing scarlet spikes fanned out like weirwood leaves. But Dany’s increasing hunger could not be ignored. Another bolt of it hit him. Jon stood abruptly, shook Arya and Robb off his back. They tumbled into the snow in a heap.

“That’s enough,” Lyanna told them. “Jon needs to hunt.”

“But he can do that any old time,” Rickon complained. He aimed another snowball for Jon’s tail and missed.

“Dragon hunting is different.” Lyanna grabbed Rickon’s arm and pulled him back. She turned to Jon. “Go on, sweet wolf, we’ll be here when you return.”

Yet, as he lifted his head toward the clear sky, searching for a ripe, fresh scent, it was his mother’s that filled his mind. Bittersweet, grateful, but so deeply wistful it shook him to the bone. Jon dipped his head toward her and crooned softly as he lowered a wing toward her.

“I’ll only slow you down.” Lyanna glanced at Dany, then back to him. “And dragon riding is only for your mate. I-isn’t it?”

“And for family,” Dany assured her. “I grew up riding on my mother and brother’s backs. And Jon’s flown on me and Rhaegar, too. Go. He wants you with him.”

Years seemed to melt from Lyanna as a huge smile spread over her face. His mother was far from old, just twice his own seventeen years, but grief had aged her. Gone were the tired eyes, the worry lines, the longing for distant days and faces. Lyanna climbed his wing like she’d never done anything else. Once she was seated against his largest spike, her hands gripping the others, pelt tucked safe under her bottom, Jon sniffed skyward.

He caught something then, a group of deer, thin-legged, tails lined in white, antlers and backs covered in frosty snow. With a roar that made his cousins clutch their ears, Jon surged into the air. From his back, Lyanna whooped and laughed as their hunt began.

 

* * *

 

Winter came with a fury on the solstice. Snows fell waist high, kept the pack corralled inside Winterfell’s warm walls. While the wolves could hunt through the harshness of winter, Dany could not bear the crippling cold in her human skin. His Stark family, however, was quite keen to spend time tucked inside with her. For the first time in Jon’s memory, they abandoned their season long prowl through the wolfswood in their paws. Even Uncle Benjen remained for the season, arriving only a week prior from another half year north of the Wall.

“Always knew you had another half,” he remarked upon seeing Jon his first night back. Benjen was as gaunt as ever, more a dark spector than flesh and blood. “Those horns permanent?”

“Kind of.” Jon pulled a face as they sunk out of sight. “I can hide my dragon features, but its bloody uncomfortable. They’re always just beneath the skin.”

Across the feast hall, the rest of the family was piled around Dany, Jon’s pelt safe around her shoulders, listening to her tales of her journey across the sea. Baby Alayne babbled away on Dany’s lap as Jeyne tried her best to feed her. Uncle Ned joined Jon and Benjen, three horns of ale in hand. 

“Think you’re old enough for this now, boy.” He pushed a horn toward Jon, made all three tap them together before drinking. Jon grimaced and coughed at the burning bite. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Someday,” Uncle Benjen agreed as he finished his own horn. “You’ll have to be once you’re leading us. Not too quick, don’t be like Robb. He spent half my last visit trying to out drink me.”

“I’m sure Auntie Cat liked that.”

Uncle Ned frowned as he sipped his own. “Not in the slightest.”

They all chuckled, but Jon’s eyes drifted back to Dany across the room, his baby cousin still bouncing on her knee. His horns slipped free when she caught his eye and smiled.

“She’s a good one,” Ned told him. “Special. You two talked names yet?”

“No,” Jon admitted. They’d brushed around the subject since arriving at Winterfell, but hadn’t really offered any choices yet. “Lot harder to have four names ready than just two.”

His uncles exchanged a rare grin, one full of meaning that Jon couldn’t place. “What?”

“Our wild sister said something similar when you were in her belly.” Benjen shook his head, despite his bemused smile. “Didn’t have a name ready for you until she saw your squalling red face.”

Jon glanced at his mother across the room, but she was as bright as ever, like a star tumbled to earth. They’d talked briefly of her pregnancy and how it compared to a dragon’s. Yet, Lyanna was hesitant to brooch the subject. Anything that turned the conversation too closer to her time with Rhaegar left her silent.

“Was it a normal pregnancy? Like Aunt Cat’s or Jeyne’s?”

This time when Ned and Benjen looked at each other, their expressions were much more grim. Jon spikes shifted to attention. The movement startled Uncle Benjen, who stared at them and starting laughing.

“Gods, boy, that’ll take some getting use to.” He scratched his shaggy beard, glanced at Lyanna across the hall, then back to Jon. “It was mostly normal. Belly grew steady as any other I’ve seen. Temper sharp as ever. Cravings for burnt meat, though. Never could get the flavor right for what she wanted.”

“And it was much later when you arrived,” Ned ventured. “Months later than a wolf shifter. Everything she touched reeked of your scent, too.”

Jon only nodded and finished his ale. Neither of his uncles pressed him further, but he could sense their curiosity like a current parting the air. He didn’t explain his and Dany’s differences from tradition either. Perhaps, only he was something new. Or maybe he and Dany were something new together. 

“You going to show me this new skin then?”

“If you ask nice I might.”

He climbed to his feet, eyes on Benjen. Both his uncles followed him outside to the snow trenches past the gate. The blizzards had stopped, the night sky a chilling indigo as the moon rose over the trees. Jon continued past them to a safe distance.

“Keep back,” he heard Uncle Ned warn. “Hell of a shock the first time, seeing something that big come out of him.”

But Benjen had seen dragons before. Just the one, putrid and eerie, north of the Wall. Jon shook thoughts of Aerys aside as he shut his eyes. With a crack like bone splintering, Jon shifted to his dragon skin. He gave a dull roar as the snag of pain, took a quick inventory of himself and found the culprit. His wing bones had grown more. Another three feet to either side if he had to guess, but rods of pain spikes along them. Jon sniffed each wing, flexed his wing claws as the pain receded.

_ My human bones are starting to settle, but my dragon skin still hasn’t. _

It worried him to consider what that might mean, but then he caught a glimpse of Uncle Benjen’s face through the powdery snow he’d kicked up. His eyes were wild. Jon took a step back, lowered himself in a sign of docility. Benjen, however, clutched hard at Ned, seemed to lose more and more of the control he had over himself the longer he looked. When Jon shifted back, he stayed in his muddy circle, afraid to approach.

“What’s going on? I felt—”

Dany stepped from the castle gates, glanced at Ned holding Benjen upright and Jon across the field. She took one look at the melted snow and understand part of what had occurred.

“I’ll get him inside,” Ned said. 

Dany came over to him as his uncles stumbled inside. “What happened?”

Jon ease her into his embrace, surprised to find his arms were shaking, his fingers rather stiff. “I’m not sure. He wanted to see my dragon skin, and when I shifted…”

“I felt a spike of pain,” Dany told him. She brushed her hands over his arms, down to his wrists and hands. “Right there. Did he—Benjen wouldn’t hurt you.”

“No, he didn’t. My bones are settling, I think. That’s all. Dragon skin’s still growing in leaps. Another three feet on each wing, at least.” Jon shivered as she rubbed his finger joints, tried not to wince. He’d bruised himself, though the marks hadn’t appeared yet. “Uncle Benjen was with me when I first saw Aerys up north. Might have reminded him of that or something… something  _ else _ .”

“Jon?”

But a fire had burst to life in his mind, Castle Black prominent in the center. Old smells of ashy grime burned into stone, of brimstone faded but still harsh in the castle yard. He took Dany’s hand and hurried back to the castle, in search of his uncles. 

“Jon, what is it?”

“Every year since Benjen was our age, he’s gone north of the Wall,” Jon explained as they headed into the great keep, his nose guiding him toward his uncles. “Year after year. Almost two  _ decades _ . Castle Black was attacked at some point. I could smell it when I was there, but it was old, ten years or more. Nobody else seemed to smell it, but… what if he was there when that dragon attacked? What if when I roared it, I don’t know, reminded him of that?”

Dany’s eyes brightened as they continued along. “He could tell us what happened when the dragon crossed the Wall.”

Uncle Ned had brought Benjen to his chambers at the base of the great keep. Jon hesitated only a second as he knocked.

“It’s me and Dany.”

Ned opened the door, his face pinched. “He had a shock, I think. Not serious, but…”

Jon hurried inside, Dany at his side. Uncle Benjen sat on the edge of his unkempt bed, rubbing his temples, muttering to himself.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

“It’s f-fine, lad. Just wasn’t expecting…”

“The roar?”

Benjen’s hands jerked, but he didn’t look up as Jon sat down beside him.

“Jon reminded you of him, didn’t he?” Dany asked. “The dragon you both met beyond the Wall.”

When Uncle Benjen remained silent, Jon settled an arm over his shoulders, let his scent spread slowly. To drive his uncle’s worries and fears away, to calm him, to hopefully return his speech to him.

“You don’t look like him,” Uncle Benjen muttered. “Not in the slightly, not at all like the Midnight Dread. He always comes in the deep dark. One of the few things the wildlings and us agree on is that dragon.”

“He was at Castle Black,” Jon pressed, trying to control his scent’s strength, to not overwhelm his uncle’s choice to speak further or not. “I could smell dragonflame there, at Hardin’s Tower most of all. Could  _ feel _ his claws on the stone.”

“It was my first season up north. He fell out of the sky like… like a terrible god. Set half the castle aflame in seconds.” Benjen squinted at Jon’s face, cupped his cheek. “People died, burned to ash or trapped inside. But the Wall… you know how it looks in the sunlight. Colors vibrant and reflecting across the snow. It was like that, but more somehow. Focused on him and his destruction. He started shrieking and writhing, tried to fly off, then slammed into the top of the Wall and he fell. To the north side. Never found a body, just some pools of boiling blood. Next he was seen was wildling reports years after.”

Dany dropped onto the bed on Benjen’s other side and hugged his arm. Her lemon sweetness filled the air as his uncle’s breathing slowed to normal.

“What did he look like that first time? His fire and eyes, what color?”

Uncle Benjen gave him a confused look. “Does that change for dragons? Both were green, Jon. Bright green just like when you met him.”

 

* * *

 

As snows buried Winterfell, painting the world white even a foot in front of his face, Jon stewed over his uncle’s words. His story was not entirely unexpected, not the burning of Castle Black nor the disappearance, but Aerys’is dragonfire and eyes already being green made no sense. Dany couldn’t fathom what it meant either. She was far more enraptured with the details, stuck inside as she was most days. Bitter cold seeped over the land, left Dany shivery and exhausted. Her belly continuously throbbed with heat, and though it continued to swell, Jon couldn’t help but notice a slowing to it.

“It’s normal,” Dany kept insisting, each morning when she clung to him and the last trickles of his nurturing purr. “Mama told me hers always slowed down in the cold. And I can purr when she couldn’t, so that’s keeping them warm between yours and mine.”

Still, he forced his own purr to continue a little longer, to spread warmth and love over every inch of her skin. Jon dipped his head to kiss her.

“If there’s ever a next time, we’re staying in the south for the winter,” Jon told her. “Cold is fine for me, but for them and  _ you _ … ”

“We’ve got you here with us. Stop worrying. Here.” Dany took his hand and slid it over her belly right to the little thump of someone’s hand or foot. His purr kicked up against her spine, seeping as deep as it could into her womb. “She thinks you’re being silly, too.”

“She?”

Jon rubbed his hand over the spot, laughing as it shifted under her skin, chasing it with his hand.

“One is definitely a girl.” 

Dany pulled his hand away and kissed his bruised knuckles. His skin was still fighting to settle before his bones, his feet and hands and limbs littered with bruises in all stages of healing. Just another exhaustion on top of the rest, but his wings insisted on growing, fighting to reach their size before his human skin closed off.

“Have you thought any more about what Benjen said?”

Near three moons had passed since their arrival. Eight months since their mating, Dany’s belly now so ripe they could no longer cuddle face to face. Dready winter had swept in and shut them all inside. Only in the breaks between storms did Jon ever venture out. To shift to his scales as much as possible so they could finish maturing. To hunt and howl with his cousins and mother and uncles and aunts. Nana Lyarra remained in charge, but she slowed for him to trot alongside her now. Deferred to him in the most subtle of ways some days. Despite the curls of weirwood entering Arya’s scent, Lyarra continued to train him to replace her. Uncle Benjen’s story of the dragon was just one of a hundred things on his mind anymore.

“No, it makes less sense every time I think about it.”

Dany hummed, but it wasn’t in agreement. She eased away as his purr faded, rolled to face him, though her belly was too pronounced to let them hold each other proper. Her fingers stroked over his frills, scratched at his scalp. 

“What?”

“I had a thought the other night, when we had that dream.” Jon shivered at her words, his spikes sliding under his skin. Shared dreams were not a first for them, but Dany watching his old lived nightmares was new. “The one where Sixskins chased you through the forest, when my… when Aerys ate him.”

“And?”

“Sixskins had eaten other shifters, too, hadn’t he? And Aerys ate him,” Dany said carefully. “What if… Sixskins smelled unlike anything you’ve ever encountered.”

“They said he was a warg that ate shifters. Or took their blood and drank it. They weren’t sure.” Jon frowned. “And Aerys didn’t smell like decay, just like a dragon gone wrong. Charred ice and putrid.”

“But Aerys was already a shifter, and a magical one, too. Dragons are fire made flesh, magic melded to humans. Maybe that’s what turned his fire and eyes from cerulean. It wasn’t the Wall. Benjen said he was already green when he crossed. I think he ate another shifter. Magic is already so delicate for our kind. Mixing more with that… I expect it would be volatile.”

Jon considered her words as he rolled onto his back. They’d thought it magic all along. Little else made sense with the changes they’d discovered in Aerys. The Wall’s very foundations were layered in ancient magic. But shifters held a rare magic of their own, unique to each adaptation of a new creature melding with a human. Had Aerys made that fateful decision between the Neck and the Wall? 

“Maybe. Magic is more complicated than I could ever understand, and he seemed rather eager to hunt me. The second time I saw him, he flew overhead for hours, but the weirwoods… their blood magic kept me safe.” Jon rubbed the old scars around his eye. “All the trees had cuts like mine that night. As soon as I crossed into the grove, Sixskins couldn’t find me.”

“Didn’t you say Sixskins could smell your dragon blood?”

“Yeah, so?”

“ _ So _ Aerys must have, too, love.” Dany sat up awkwardly, one hand on her belly. “He’d spent his whole life around other dragons, familiar with all of our various scents. When he caught your scent…”

Her smile faded, her face turning ashen. For a moment, Jon expected her to get sick right on his pelt.

“Dany?”

“I want him to have smelled you and been trying to get home,” she whispered. “To come back to us all. To be the father Rhaegar had to be for me instead, but… I think he smelled you, and thought if he could eat another dragon shifter, it would set him free. Let him grow strong enough to cross the Wall again and keep…”

“Keep looking for my mother.”

Dany settled on her side against him once more, and while Jon thought most of her ideas were probably right, it was the last he disagreed with, though he didn’t speak it aloud. His scent had dominated his mother’s when she’d been pregnant. All of his Stark family who’d been alive then agreed on that count. His ashy, dragon smell had seeped everywhere without a dragon’s skin to shield it from others. Puberty had brought the same, his dragon scent spreading out like a tsunami from an earthquake’s core.

_ It was never Mama he was after, was it? Aerys wanted the halfer. He came for me. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week is Embers, then TDS the week after. Maybe sooner if I'm damn good and lucky. Embers is Tyrion's POV, which usually doesn't take me as long as some of the others.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for hanging out to read this and for your comments! :)
> 
> Until next time, loves <3


	15. Crossroads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter two weeks in a row! -fist pumps-
> 
> Dragons in winter, so so SO many dragons.
> 
> The end approaches, enjoy!

As winter’s fury raged across the moors, Dany kept inside whenever she could. Buried under furs and blankets, always next to a roaring fire to keep the numbing cold from her toes and fingers. Jon’s pelt became a permanent fixture around her. Soft, warm, a safe comfort thick with memories of hopeful spring afternoons and roasting summer embraces. While it was wonderful to see him home, to meet every Stark from Nana Lyarra’s lined face to tiny pink-cheeked Alayne, Dany missed the hills of the south.

She longed for warmer climates. For the sparkling bay just a quick dive away, the cutting aroma of salt on the air. The stuffy heat of their underground halls and chambers and catacombs. The North was Jon’s home—his childhood had been lived in the very room where she woke up each morning. But it was no place for a dragon to linger.

_ They expect him to lead, for us to become their mated alphas. _

Dany’s hand settled on the hot swell of her belly. Her insides were like a boiling furnace, constant pressure pushing at her hip bones. Some nights, her and Jon’s combined purrs were so strong and molten and loving that her belly began to glow. Eight and a half moons gone, three and a half to go. Every sun closer made her wish her own mother were at her side. For guidance and explanations, to assure her that the slowing growth compared to the enormous swelling from before was no fault of hers, but part of a dragon’s nature against the winter and the cold.

_ I miss you, Mama. _

Mornings were the hardest, no matter how welcoming the Starks were. These were not her people anymore than the Dothraki had been across the sea. Each Stark was a rare gem though. Some were scratched and scuffed and worn, others dull, a few sparkling like moonlight on still water. Lyarra with her stern strength and wisdom. Lyanna’s absolute joy at her son’s return, who spent every second she could getting to know Dany. His little cousins poking at her spikes and laughing as they curled away from their grasping hands. Robb’s genuine affection and excitement at the prospect of more little wolves to join his daughter. Arya’s fierce wildness made Dany feel most at home—like she’d found a sister she’d never thought to have before.

“We  _ could _ fit Jon’s dragon harness on me is all I’m saying,” Arya told her every few nights around the great hall’s hearth. “Strap you on my back and you could hunt with us. If you can ride a dragon, you can ride a direwolf.”

“I don’t know if you’re big enough for us yet,” Dany always countered, one hand on her stomach. “Besides, Jon would insist he take me.”

Arya made an indignant noise. “As if a stupid boy could manage it.”

“He does just fine, silly wolf that he is.”

Catelyn Stark always seemed to appear then, corralling Arya off to bed with her two youngest, surrounded by three angry voices protesting. Dany was grateful for the silence when it came, but confused by it, too. Arya felt familiar, not quite in the way Jon had, but similar. 

“It’s the alpha in her scent,” Jon explained when she finally asked. “I never really paid any mind to the particulars of it before, but we’ve all got weirwood in our smell. Nana, Mama, me, Arya. It’s part of the alpha scent for our pack.”

And it explained her ease with the younger girl, but worried her, too. One day, Arya would be capable of leading. She was already proving at twelve to be a fighter instead of docile. Would she yield to a dragon’s dominance when the day came? 

_ Do I even want her to? _

On winter’s last full moon, Dany ventured out into the courtyard, around the great crackling fire the Starks kept lit whenever the storms stopped. They all gathered around the magnificent sight, ash and sparks dancing in the air, faces illuminated in reds and oranges and golden yellows. Overhead, the moon hung fat and proud. Just a glimpse of it made the twins stir in her belly, a tiny foot pressing at where her hand rested. The scent of fire always set them twisting and pressing against her ribs. Not even her gentle caresses and purr could quiet them, especially when Jon soared overhead, his song trilling across the moonlit land.

“He was the same around the fire.”

Lyanna appeared at her left shoulder. Instead of her eyes being skyward like the rest of family watching Jon’s swooping flight, they were on Dany’s belly.

“They like the warmth,” Dany told her, then inhaled sharply as Jon’s song twisted to theirs. A strangeness settled in her womb, left their babes still and calm as his noises raced down her spine. “And his singing. They love that most of all.”

She smiled softly, then rested her hand next to Dany’s. At once, someone kicked at the spot. Their son, Dany was certain, though she hadn’t told Jon the new realization yet.

“You’re bigger than I was at the end,” Lyanna remarked placing both hands on the sides of her stomach. Dany glimpsed downward at the strain of her dress, acutely aware of how stretched her skin was. Discomfort was becoming a constant companion, as if she’d eaten too much every second of the day and night. “Granted, I was terrified by those last months. Almost three past our normal pregnancies and he was still rolling around in there.”

“You made it though,” Dany said. “Jon was perfect and happy and healthy.”

“He was.” Lyanna’s hands fell away, but she didn’t move to join the others further from the flames. “You’re worried.”

Dany hesitated, but Lyanna’s sharp eyes were not easy to lie to. 

“They seem happy, strong, but my belly’s slowing. I’m sure its normal—just how it is for a dragon in the cold, but…” Dany bit her lip as Jon flew past again. “I wish my mother was here. Or Uncle Aemon. He knows everything about dragon shifters. They’d know if everything’s going well or not. What if something  _ is _ wrong? What if—”

“They’re perfect.” Lyanna wrapped her up tight in her arms. Between Jon’s pelt and Lyanna’s smoky fur a soothing peace enveloped her. Dany sniffed and let her tears fall. “I might not be a dragon, but I did carry one in my belly. And yes, it was different for me, but your little ones are so loved already, Dany. All anyone has to do is look at the way you smile and glow, how Jon adores you. They’ll be just fine, winter or not. Besides, if you get any bigger, I worry you’ll burst.”

Hearing someone say it aloud instead of in her head was a sweet relief. They hugged for a long time, but Dany shivered at the cold seeping in when they broke apart. She pulled Jon’s pelt tighter around herself. Even then, his fur was only just large enough to cover all of her torso. Her lower back throbbed dully as the babies fought for better positions once more.

“Let’s get you inside,” Lyanna decided, but she wasn’t the only person to follow Dany into the great hall. Remnants of their earlier feast littered the tables still. Near everything had been eaten expect a small pile of charred steaming flesh—the last of Jon’s hunt for her.

Dany dug into the plate at once, her insides writhing in ecstasy at the ashy flavor, the crunch of the crisped skin and the tearing of the meat. On either side of her, Lyanna and Nana Lyarra watched her inhale what was left.

“See? They’re just fine.”

Dany cracked the final bone and sucked the marrow from it as Lyanna kissed her temple. Nana Lyarra, however, watched her critically.

“This isn’t your home,” she said when Dany set the splintered bone down. No accusation lingered in her words, just a sad resignation. Dany’s insides curled. “I feared as much, knowing what Jon’s other half was, but still, I hoped. He’s a born leader. Not just an alpha, but a man who can guide others. You have that same spirit. Together, you’re perfect. But the North isn’t a dragon’s home.”

“It is,” Dany insisted, though she hated the crack in her voice at the lie. “Once winter is over, and the babies are here, we’ll make this our home.”

“No, sweet one.” Nana Lyarra reached over and patted Dany’s arm. She sighed heavily. “This is not your home. It’s not Jon’s anymore either, I’m afraid. Winterfell will always be  _ a _ home for him, certainly, and perhaps for your little ones in some ways, but… Winterfell isn’t his place anymore. His place is with you. Wherever that leads you both.”

“But Jon—he  _ loves _ it here.”

“And he will always be welcome,” Lyanna said, and Dany was horrified to see tears in her eyes. “Both of you and the twins, and all that come after. Your mother and uncle and Jon’s father, all the Targaryens are welcome here, Dany. From now until the end of time. We did raise one afterall. But it’s time for Jon to grow beyond what we are here. In so many ways, he already has.”

Overhead, Jon’s song wavered low, marking his descent to the snowy fields outside the castle walls. Dany could almost feel her own wings at the sound like a rustling behind her. The chilled air pressing against the flame in her skin, the strange sensation of weightlessness tangled with a body too large for the clouds. The fire pulsed in her heart, flooding her body with life.

“Have you two talked about any of this yet? All these worries you’re carrying around?”

They hadn’t. Jon had so many other concerns of his own. His family’s pack, learning to lead them when the inevitable day came, endless nightmares of Aerys that Dany only caught whispers of like a light breeze trying to gutter a candle. Worst though, were the bruises that traced his arms and legs. Every time he shifted new ones appeared. First it had been just his fingers and toes, but slowly it had spread down his limbs. Only last night, she’d discovered a hard line of them ballooning between the spikes along the back of his shoulders.

His dragon skin was fighting to reach its ultimate size. Racing against the nature of time before his human bones closed off for good. 

Yet, every night he still lulled her to sleep with his nurturing purr. It was more necessary now than Dany had imagined, but the cold was unrelenting. He used the last of his daily strength to help her fight off the harsh chill soaking into the land. Every morning she woke to his warmth and love. No matter how exhausted and in pain he was, Jon made sure they were taken care of, that she was as warm as a summer lagoon in the afternoon.

“He’s got enough to worry himself with,” Dany said. “You’ve seen his bruises from his dragon skin trying to grow before its too late. And… that’s my fault, too. We should have waited another year, let him have this time to focus on growing his dragon skin. Not on nurturing me.”

“That isn’t true, Daenerys. No, don’t argue.” Lyanna pulled her as close as she could with Dany’s stomach in the way. “Jon is happier than I have ever seen him. Despite the hardships and the bruising and the worries, he’s thriving and more than capable of handling you sharing your concerns with him. Talk to him, sweet one. Don’t shut each other out now.”

_ Then what isn’t he telling me? _

Ever since Dany had shared her theories on Aerys, Jon had turned inward. Most of the time, he was as caring and open as he’d always been. Whenever her father’s name was mentioned, though, Dany could feel him close off. Like a mountain began to grow between them, full of jagged rocks and great granite peaks. Something about that conversation had brought a panic to him—a wordless terror Jon had yet to name in the fortnight since.

That night, after Lyanna and Nana Lyarra had returned to the bonfire outside, Dany tucked herself away in Jon’s childhood bedchamber. She buried herself under the furs and Ghost’s pelt, pressed her nose into the shaggy white fur until his scent filled her senses. He was hers still, would be forevermore, and yet…

A division was there, like a layer of stone had cut into the bloody sap of his scent. Splitting him into two halves that contradicted each other.

She drifted off while she waited for him, woke to him stripping his clothes off and climbing in behind her. How he could stand to be nude in such frosty weather was beyond her. 

“Didn’t mean to wake you, love.”

Jon tucked himself up against her spine once he’d soothed her spikes under her skin. His purr came to life then, but it built slower than usual, forcing itself to full strength by sheer willpower. She could feel his exhaustion as much as his love.

“It’s okay, I wanted to talk about…” Dany swallowed, and her agitation made Jon’s purr stutter and fade. “About everything that’s been happening lately.”

His palm settled on her belly, massaging slow circles where one of the babe’s had begun to wiggle. Dany watched the little elbow or knee press at her skin, felt the strangeness of the movements that even now were mind-boggling to watch. Nothing about the twins seemed real sometimes. Like their squirms and little heartbeats and the presses of their hands and feet were simply a fantastic dream she’d created. 

_ Yet they’ll be in my arms instead of my belly in only a few months. _

“You’re worried about them.” Jon poked at the persistent little bulge as Dany grunted in discomfort. They were getting far too big for her belly to contain. “Stop hurting your mother, you. Or we’ll have to have words first thing when you’re born.”

“She’s going to be a wild one,” Dany remarked as the bulge receded only to find a new place to nudge at where her belly was pressed to the bed. “Ugh, sweet one, please stop.”

Jon shifted around her until he was laying face to belly with her. He pressed a dozen soft kisses to the swell, hands massaging slowly.

“Shhh, its sleep time, okay? You want our purrs, I know, but Mama and Papa need to talk a bit first.”

He rubbed his horns against her stomach, left her breathless with how much tenderness one quick brush could pour into her. But with it came a dark hint of his nightmares—a brilliant flash of green that seemed to burn the air around them with Aerys’s scent.

“You still dream about him,” Dany said as Jon shifted up the bed to her eye level. She was startled to see a new line of bruising along his collarbones. “ _ Jon, _ your shoulders.”

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “Just part of being so late to my skin, that’s all. It’ll pass soon. Another couple of months, maybe a year.”

And surely that was all it was, yet without their dragon family they had no way to be certain.

“We need them with us.” Dany ran her fingertips over his newest bruises, then scooped his hand up to examine it. His skin was back to normal there, just as pale and warm as she’d come to expect. “I miss them, Jon. Mama and Uncle Aemon and Rhaegar. I’m certain my pregnancy slowing down in winter is normal, but your mother said I’m already bigger than she was at the end of hers. Perhaps its just because there’s two, but I just want them here, you know? Someone who’s done this before. And so we can ask for their opinions on what’s happening with you and me.”

“Our babies are just fine, Dany. And maybe… I don’t know. Twins are usually earlier, aren’t they? It hasn’t happened to dragon shifters before that I can remember. Less space to grow, and all of that. Nothing’s wrong with them, or what we’re doing for them. They’re both healthy and strong every night and morning when we can both feel them.” His eyes soften, an uncomfortable sort of vulnerability shining back at her. “I wish they were here, too, though. I keep thinking if I just… if I keep showing I’m strong enough for all of this, it’ll make it true and I… I’m scared my bones will stop. That they will and my dragon won’t. I’m scared that’s why it hurts whenever I transform now, and I’m… my dreams…”

She glimpsed that harsh flash of vibrant green flame again, spotted an echo of it in Jon’s eyes before it was gone.

“Aerys is beyond the Wall. He can’t come south anymore, Jon, or he would have already.” Dany couldn’t say for certain if that were true, but her best guesses led her to believe it. “Your mother is safe from him. We all are.”

Jon stilled at her words, but instead of looking calmer, he grew more agitated. Their babes stirred in her belly once more, writhing around like they were trying to wrestle each other for the best punching spot.

“I don’t think it was her that Aerys was after, Dany.” His voice was so quiet she almost didn’t hear him, but the tears that suddenly lined his eyelashes hurt to see. “It’s me. He smelled  _ me  _ on her. You’ve heard what Mama said when she was pregnant—everything near her smelled like my dragon scent. There was no dragon womb to contain it, to hide me away. And when I was up north, he came for me. Uncle Benjen ran off into the forest, but Aerys didn’t seem to even notice him. He was after me. And if he… what if he does find a way south? That puts everyone in danger, you and the twins most of all.”

“He  _ won’t _ Jon. I will not let him take you from me or our families.”

He wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, rolled onto his back and gazed at the ceiling.

“I won’t let him either.” Jon grimaced. “I should have told you, I know. We’ve got enough going on without you worrying about that.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at his words.

“What?”

“I said the same thing to your mother and Nana Lyarra earlier,” Dany admitted. “About me worrying about the babies, and… about staying in the North.”

Jon didn’t say anything for several minutes. His eyes remained on the ceiling, dark in the glow of the dying fire. 

“We can’t stay here, not forever,” Jon said. “Even for me, Winterfell isn’t the same now. It’s home, but it’s… too small somehow. Every day I feel like I’m trying to scoop up all these old pieces of my life from before we met, and fit them in around all we’ve built together. But they don’t all fit anymore. The North’s a part of me, just like my direwolf skin, but I chose my dragon first the day we chose each other.”

Nostalgia settled upon her despite the sudden release of tension in her heart. Jon would remain with her, would stay by her side even if it meant finding another place and path. Yet she felt his melancholy and loneliness, too. The yearning to remain part of his pack—his family—to keep some part of his first life with him. To romp in the forests and streams, to snuggle down into a fluffy direwolf pile, to greet spring by rolling his pale fur in the mud until he was as dark as any of his cousins.

“We’ll still visit,” Dany told him. “Every year, we’ll come see your pack and let the twins learn to be wolves, too.”

“If they’re wolves.”

“They will be, love. They’ll be both, just like you.”

“I hope so,” Jon said as he rolled to face her. “We can all pile up around you as wolves when it gets cold. Keep our favorite dragon warm.”

Dany smiled at that image. Ghost stretched at her back, a pair of soft, fuzzy pups licking at her cheeks and nose. 

“I look forward to it.”

Jon returned to his spot behind her then, cradling her against his torso, his purr seeping into her like a gush of hot steam. 

“And they’re absolutely fine, love, can’t you feel them? Of all the things to worry about, our babes are the last on the list. Their hearts are so strong already.”

His face tucked into the curve of her neck, their horns knocking together as his heat spread over her. She could feel both of them then, settling inside her, curled up tight and safe, their tiny hearts slowing just a touch as they calmed. But something more was there, too. Dany inhaled sharply at the first tentative brush of it inside her. Jon gave a soft grunt of surprise, his hand cupping the bottom of her stomach. Her spine felt like it was rattling inside her as her purr tuned to his—as their little dragons offer their own curious attempts in answer.

“Jon, they’re—can you feel that, too?”

He laughed, quiet and delighted, a warm huff of breath that moistened her neck. “They’re purring, Dany,” Jon murmured in awe. “They’re—gods, they’re trying to join us.”

And they were, though they were just little babies still nestled inside her womb. Dany could feel every surge of their heat as they stuttered toward something more stable. Jon smiled against her neck, kissed her skin. For hours it seemed, they lay together, changing their pitches and vibrations. Until both little ones had settled into a delicate rhythm that eased the pressure in her pelvis, sent precious trembles over the skin of her stomach and breasts. Awe resonated between them, even as those sweet purrs faded into a cozy, sleepy silence. They whispered more of the future as they settled in for sleep. Of names for their twins, of their ongoing argument about who they would take after more, how their wolf and dragon skins would look once they were old enough to claim them. 

Dany was just drifting off, Jon’s warm face tucked against her neck, when a distant song brought them both back to alertness. For a moment, they lay there, listening, and then—

A cadence of sweet melodies and lingering crescendos echoed across the snowy moors.

Jon bolted upright, shivering. Dany tried to sit herself up, but her stomach made it such a struggle that she gave up.

She recognized the dragon singing, growing closer with each breath, his song dancing across the winter fields.

“He came,” Jon muttered, and he looked almost frantic as he hurried out of bed and back into his clothes. “Papa came north. That great fucking  _ prat _ —”

Jon’s swears were cut short. Again, Rhaegar’s song spread across the castle, louder than before, but joined. Not by one voice, but two. A great sob left Dany before she could stop it.

_ Mama. Uncle Aemon _ .

Jon threw his tunic over his head, stumbled toward her while trying to shove his arms into his sleeves. He took her hands and with a great heave, helped her upright. Dany’s belly came to rest between her thighs, heavy and swollen fit to burst. At once the pressure in her hips was near unbearable. She winced and massaged her sides. Inside, the twins were still as if they, too, were listening to the trio of dragons approaching. Her love helped her dress, tucking her feet into her shoes, fitting her furs and dress around her. She clutched Ghost’s pelt around her shoulders as they hurried out to the courtyard.

Most of the Starks were already outside, gazing south in alarm. 

“It’s okay,” Jon assured them, for little Rickon was clutching Aunt Cat’s skirts and crying at the swell of dragonsong. To all of them, it was just a lot of loud roaring and screeching, but not to a dragon. “It’s our family, come to join us.”

His uncles seemed unsettled by the noise, even Robb appeared anxious, holding a fussing Alayne tight to his chest. 

Lyanna, however, was already at the gate and moving swiftly beyond it. Dany wobbled after her, using Lyanna’s carved path through the snow to reach the field beyond. Jon walked with her, his hands on her elbows, guiding her through the wet chill to where he’d landed earlier. It was the only spot for miles around that wasn’t buried under several feet of snow. Instead the ground was black and charred, littered with bones from his hunts, bursting with the fresh aroma of his smoking ash.

“They’re following your scent,” Dany said, as the song changed cadence. Her spine seemed to vibrate as her spikes poked free, preening toward the joyous song. “There!”

She pointed to a bright patch beneath the moon as Rhaegar’s glittering jade scales crested over the bare trees of the forest. Behind him, Rhaella’s scales flashed scarlet in the moonlight, Uncle Aemon flapping at her side, a violet so dark it was almost black in the night. They circled above them, singing their joy, before landing one by one. 

Uncle Aemon descended first, wobbling terribly as his claws met the ground. Jon raced out to meet him as he shrank to his frail human bones, holding him upright. Dany waddled her way toward them as Rhaella landed and shifted. Her mother gave a cry of delight when she spotted her.

“Daenerys!”

A great sob left Dany as soon as she was in her mother’s arms. Rhaella cradled her as best she could from the side, one arm around Dany’s shoulders, the other doing its best to accommodate her heavy belly. She was almost blubbering, stumbling over her words as Rhaella rocked her. Snowflakes drifted down onto them, melting in their hair as the twins gave several insistent kicks.

“Goodness, yes, hello, sweet ones.” Rhaella laughed as she pulled away, her hand settling on Dany’s belly. She seemed delighted at the twins’ movements, but her mouth fell open as she ran her hands over Dany’s stomach. “Gods, Daenerys, you’re—”

“It’s been slowing, I know.” Dany twisted her hands anxiously, her back aching until she placed one hand on it for extra support. “We thought it was just because of the cold. Winter is so much harsher up here.”

“Dany, you look full term.”

Rhaella stared at her in amazement, still caressing her impressive stomach. Behind her, however, Dany became suddenly aware of the tense scene. Spikes of anger that weren’t her own pinched at her chest. She stepped away from Rhaella and found Jon still supporting Uncle Aemon as he glowered at Rhaegar. Lyanna wore her own matching scowl.

“Lyanna… hi.”

For a moment, nobody moved. Rhaegar stood before his mate and his son, snowflakes on his shoulders and head, his jaw trembling, not from cold but from nerves. Lyanna’s eyes glinted like steel.

“Hi? Nineteen  _ years _ and that’s the  _ best _ you can come up with?!”

Before anyone could say another word, she punched him in the jaw. Worry filled Dany as Rhaegar tumbled backward into the snow, tangled in the straps of his harness. Lyanna didn’t stop with one hit. She followed him into the frozen heap, swinging at every bit of him she could reach.

With Rhaella’s support, Dany joined Jon and Uncle Aemon as Rhaegar’s pained yelps echoed across the field. Snow sprayed the air as he managed to get away from Lyanna, but he didn’t make it far. Lyanna emerged from the same heap in her direwolf form, snarling at him, her fur bristling in anger.

“Should we stop her?” Dany asked Jon.

“Best let her at him now. She’ll come after us if we get in her way. Besides,” Jon said, scowling as Lyanna chased his father around the snow drifts, “he deserves it. Stupid prat.”

“Daenerys?”

Uncle Aemon reached for her, his wrinkled hands searching for hers. When his fingertips found her stomach instead, he laughed.

“Still full of surprises.” Despite his arms shaking, Uncle Aemon’s skin was glowing. His once faded horns were no longer stripped of color. Both were a beautiful hue of lilac, still porous like sandstone. Hints of blooming roses and lilies and wildflowers saturated the surrounding air, a touch of spring seeping into the wind. “My dear, your time is near.”

“I’ve still got three months at least,” Dany told him uncertainly as Jon and Rhaella switched places. Jon’s arm circled around her back, his hand on the side of her stomach, rubbing gently. “A whole season until summer.”

_ “You asshole, Rhaegar Targaryen!” _

Jon glanced at his parents, rolled his eyes, and started for the castle. From the arched gate, the rest of the Starks watched the scene anxiously. Little Alayne had shifted to her tiny wolf skin, howling weakly as Robb cuddled her. Nana Lyarra stepped out first as the four of them reached the gate.

“Nana, this is Dany’s mother, Rhaella, and Uncle Aemon,” Jon introduced. “This is my grandmother, Lyarra Stark, the alpha of our pack.”

“Welcome to Winterfell.”

Dany stilled as the two women eyed each other. From Lyarra’s pelt to her mother’s horns and spikes, they both radiated power and elegance. Jon’s thoughts trickled into hers.

_ When alphas meet trouble usually follows. _

She never thought of her mother in such a way, though as a dragon it was certainly true. For a moment longer, Jon’s grandmothers stared at each other, then relief settled around them. Dany let out a breath as the women embraced warmly, each taking Uncle Aemon by an arm to help him inside. The rest of the pack began to relax and head back into the courtyard. Behind Dany and Jon, however, Rhaegar and Lyanna were still fighting.

“If I’d known, I would have been here, Lya!”

“You did know, you pointless coward! Jon was with you a whole year, and you didn’t come back with him! You hid from me. What did you think? That I despised you? That I raised  _ our _ son and never once wished you were here beside us?”

Jon tugged her toward the gate, hurrying her along at a much swifter pace than he would normally. She didn’t need their bond to understand the tightening in his jaw nor the twitch of his eye.

_ They both love you, Jon, they just need to figure each other out again. _

He didn’t answer, but his steps slowed as they headed into the great hall. Uncle Aemon, Rhaella, and Nana Lyarra were seated inside, already discussing the shouting match happening outside the castle walls.

“She’s always had a quick temper, a fiery one,” Lyarra was saying as she poured steaming mugs of tea. 

“She’d need it to contend with a dragon so well.” Rhaella turned to smile at Dany, tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Rhaegar’s definitely calmer than most, even in his youth, but a dragon is a dragon. As for the shouting,” Rhaella continued, her voice rising as Lyanna’s rage carried in through the window. “He’s well aware he deserves it.”

“Almost twenty years of it building… she’ll be at him for a while before she calms down, I’m afraid.”

“Best to let her,” Rhaella said. She accepted her tea with a smile, then sighed. “Ever since that summer solstice when they mated, he’s not been the same as he was before. He was always melancholy, but not quite so… disappointed in himself as he’s been since he thought he’d lost Lyanna and Jon.”

“They’ll work it out,” Dany said, eyeing Jon’s stiff posture. 

Jon took his seat next to her, massaging her belly until the squirming settled. Everyone’s attention turned to her then. Uncle Aemon seemed most keen to examine her belly again. Dany let him, his touch stirring the twins back to their kicks and elbowing. She winced as one of them found her bladder.

“I can’t say how, but your time is almost here,” he told them, hands shifting gently over her swell. “There’s no way you can’t be, Dany. Tell me, has your pregnancy progressed like our ancestors?”

“If it had would it be my time soon?” 

Her irritation swept the room in a sharp bite, even with Jon’s hand soothing her.

“I suppose not,” Uncle Aemon murmured. “But have you noticed anything different, like with your horns and spikes?”

Jon wrapped his arms around her waist, knocking Uncle Aemon’s hands away. At once, some of the annoyance she felt dissipated.

“They purred earlier tonight,” Dany said after a moment. “For the first time, while we were settling down to sleep, I… we could both feel their purrs. They were trying to learn, to follow ours.”

“Purring?” Rhaella sounded alarmed. “They aren’t even born yet, though. To already be accepting parts of their dragon skins before birth…”

Uncle Aemon made a thoughtful noise, his pale eyes shifting toward the fire in the hearth, seeking the reassuring warmth. “Daenerys and Jon’s mating has brought many firsts for our family. If you purred now, do you think they would join?”

Dany glanced at Jon, hesitant, but he only waited for her to decide. To guide them.

“We can try,” she said finally. “They’ve only done it once, just hours ago…”

“Try, sweet one.” Rhaella leaned in and kissed her cheek, then Jon’s. 

She settled back into Jon’s embrace, felt him shifting around to line his belly up just right to the curve of her spine as her spikes sunk into her skin. Heat flooded her womb at once, the loving vibrations of his purr stronger than before. Dany joined him once she was warm enough, steam rising from her stomach in little wisps. Despite the dark wool of her dress, the fabric brightened as the heat began to glow. Then they waited, breathing shallow, listening for those tiny voices to answer…

This time, Dany sensed them immediately. Several kicks gave answer, then a stuttering little rumble followed. Their daughter joined a moment later, following her brother, both slipping into their pitch with ease. And they ought to know it by now, Dany realized. Both babes should know their song by heart, feel the deep love and cherishment they’d been lulling them with since they’d been created.

“Here.” Jon reached for Rhaella’s hand when the rest of the group gave no notice to the twins joining in. He wrapped her fingers around his horn, eyes drifting shut as he dropped his chin onto Dany’s shoulder.

She tucked her face toward him, eyes falling shut, too. Uncle Aemon’s hand found her horn a moment later, both of their elders gasping in surprise. They could feel it then, Dany was certain. Every little waver in pitch and stutter as their babes built their purrs to strength.

For a minute, Jon and her let their family rejoice at the vibrancy of the moment. Rhaella was crying when they stopped, Uncle Aemon in tears, too. The sight sent a wave of panic through Dany.

“Did we do something wrong? They feel so happy and full, but—”

Uncle Aemon grabbed her by both horns and kissed her forehead. “You have done everything right, my dear.  _ Everything _ is perfect.”

“But this is all so… unusual.” Dany fought to keep her voice level. “They shouldn’t purr until they’re older. I was four, but even that was considered too young.”

“Based on our histories, certainly,” Uncle Aemon agreed, though he didn’t sound convinced. “And yet, here they are, already embracing their dragon skins, thanks to the wonderful, nurturing love you’ve grown them in. History can we wrong, Daenerys. Perhaps it just took us all these centuries to realize how poorly we’ve been failing our little ones. Why shifting is such a long, painful process for all of us. Two loving parents were all that was needed. Not forced mated pairs or relationships cradled in strife.”

“They’re coming soon though,” and Jon sounded as panicked as Dany felt. They’d thought they had three moons more, but Uncle Aemon and Rhaella made it sound like a matter of weeks, if not days. “Shouldn’t it still take the full year? I mean, that was true for me, growing outside of a dragon womb. Shouldn’t—”

“Love was the key.” Uncle Aemon’s voice rang with such finality, that Jon fell silent behind her. “Should and shouldn’t has little to do with it, I think. And perhaps, its a fluke of having twins, the earliness, though its near in time for a normal human or shifter’s pregnancy. Nine months instead of twelve, just like all the rest… Some day, we’ll know for sure, if you’re ever blessed with another conception, but for now, you need to rest, Daenerys.”

“I was before you three showed up singing.”

Rhaella smiled and stood up. “Come, let’s get you to bed, dear. Next thing you know, you’ll be nesting and then they’ll be on their way into the world.”

Yet even as Dany let Jon and her mother guide her back to the tower where they slept, a prickle of wrongness settled upon her. Rhaella’s description of the coming days rang false to her. She would nest, yes, every weary bone in her bone seemed to hum in desperate need at the mere suggestion of cocooning herself in furs and blankets and Jon. But birth was not the next stage.

No, birth was the last celebration.

First, her wings would be freed. Her skin itched at the very thought, body flushing warm and full and ripe with flame and smoke and brimstone. 

Before that final moment, Dany would fly once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so I'll be leaving you all here for a bit. I'm moving across the country in roughly 3 weeks. So I'm packing and preparing, and then stuffing all my possessions into a big box, then driving the 3000 miles back to the east coast. Then unpacking a big box and all of that... fun. I'm excited, but tired of moving already!
> 
> So weekly updates will be stalled for a bit. I'm going to lessen some of the flip-flopping pressure and focus on Embers until I'm officially moved. No guarantees of weekly updates on that, but any updates from now until the last week of July will be Embers.
> 
> After that, I'll be back to rotating! For a few weeks anyway, haha. There's only two chapters of this one left, and probably a little epilogue.
> 
> Until the heat of summer is upon us, I bid you all (a temporary) farewell!


End file.
